STC Covers Eurocopter AS350 B1/BA/B2/B3 Models

Appareo Systems and Eurocopter today announced that the FAA has recently granted an STC for the ALERTS Vision 1000 Flight Data Management (FDM) system. The STC covers installation in Eurocopter AS350 B1, BA, B2, and B3 aircraft. Additional STCs for other aircraft models are planned.

The ALERTS Vision 1000, the most recent addition to Appareo’s award-winning ALERTS family of FDM products, was jointly developed by Appareo Systems, American Eurocopter and Eurocopter to provide helicopter operators of all types with a lightweight, low-cost solution for recording flight data, cockpit imagery and audio. By adding high-resolution image and ambient acoustic capture abilities to the successful ALERTS FOQA system, Appareo has made a significant contribution to increasing safe helicopter operation across the industry.

“Appareo Systems is pleased to have received this initial STC for the ALERTS Vision 1000,” said Barry Batcheller, President and CEO of Appareo Systems. “The Vision 1000 is a significant step forward in lightweight flight data monitoring technology and represents a great deal of hard work and innovation on the part of Appareo Systems, American Eurocopter and Eurocopter – receiving this STC is a solid validation of that effort.”

ALERTS ... Aircraft Logging and Event Recording for Training and Safety ... is a comprehensive Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) and FDM system designed for light and legacy aircraft where more traditional flight data recorders are too large and costly to be viable choices. As a comprehensive system, ALERTS makes effective FOQA/FDM programs available to operators of any size with any fleet. In keeping with earlier ALERTS hardware, the ALERTS Vision 1000 is extremely small and lightweight, weighing less than nine ounces. Because the unit is so small and lightweight, and requires only aircraft power and ground to function, its use is possible in nearly any aircraft.

The ALERTS Vision 1000 will be included as standard equipment on all U.S.-produced AS350 aircraft starting in April of 2010 and will be extended throughout the remainder of Eurocopter’s product line in the future.

FMI: www.appareo.com, www.eurocopter.com