OpenSkies To Launch Paris-JFK Flights In June

Upstart trans-Atlantic carrier OpenSkies and Wingspeed Corporation announced recently the British Airways subsidiary will install Wingspeed’s XLLink Flight Information Architecture to provide low-cost, long-range communications on each of its Boeing 757 aircraft. The system also offers a migration path to completely paperless operations.

"The installation of this system will allow us to communicate with our aircraft wherever they are in the world, at a very attractive price point in the near term," said Mark Mannering-Smith, Technical Pilot and project sponsor at OpenSkies, "Whilst providing us with the potential to scale up the solution to help us achieve significant efficiencies in our operations, and to offer an augmented service to our passengers," he added.

Wingspeed offers technology that will help OpenSkies achieve its goal of reducing costs through improved decision-making via the real-time exchange of information between its aircraft and operations base, whilst also providing the airline with a growth path.

"OpenSkies has selected our scalable solution in order to disseminate real-time information throughout the organization, thus improving decision-making," said Ciaran Bernard, Director of Sales in Europe for Wingspeed. "And in doing so, OpenSkies is following in the footsteps of some of the industry’s thought-leaders," he noted.

The Wingspeed solution selected by OpenSkies comprises the company's XLLink Aircraft Communications Unit, a Class 2 electronic flight bag (EFB,) and provisioning for an XLLink Network Server Unit.

Wingspeed and OpenSkies expect implementation on the first aircraft to be complete within the next three months, with each subsequent aircraft joining the fleet equipped. The onboard turnkey solution provided by Wingspeed includes hardware, software, certification and installation support.

FMI: www.wingspeedcorp.com, www.flyopenskies.com