A year-long trial of the webFB smart AID/server enabled airline to streamline data collection and improve operational efficiency
East Aurora, NY | May 15, 2018– Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ: ATRO), a leading provider of advanced technologies for the global aerospace, defense and semiconductor industries, announced that Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS) has selected the webFB® Wireless Electronic Flight Bag device, offered through its wholly owned subsidiary Astronics Ballard Technology. NAS will install the webFB on all of its Boeing 737 Next Generation (NG) aircraft to improve and automate aircraft data collection.
“We are very excited to be working with Norwegian Air Shuttle on this project. Their application is an ideal match for the high- reliability ARINC 717 data capture capabilities of the webFB,” said Jon Neal, President of Astronics Ballard Technology. “They also recognize the tremendous advantage of a simple, easy-to- install solution that minimizes aircraft downtime and allows them to quickly retrofit their fleet and gain immediate benefits.”
Aleksander Geist, Senior Avionics Engineer with Norwegian Air Shuttle, says, “For quite some time, we have been searching for a solution to improve and automate the collection of aircraft data, which currently is a manual process using physical media. The webFB, in conjunction with our EFBs, offer a very flexible and cost-effective solution. Astronics Ballard Technology has been very responsive in our aircraft trials and we are pleased with the data acquisition performance and the long-term benefit it will have for our organization. We are already looking ahead to future use cases that will allow us to further leverage our webFB technology investment.”
Astronics participated with NAS in a year-long operational trial of the webFB to validate the suitability of the device in operation and the economic benefits of the solution. In the application, the webFB gathers data from the aircraft’s ARINC 717 databus and wirelessly routes it to the electronic flight bags (EFBs), where it is automatically transferred by NAS to a data center and used for post-flight analysis. With the webFB already operating on 10 aircraft, NAS will install the product on all of their additional Boeing 737NG aircraft.
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