Company's First Flight Cheetah System Sold In 1998

True Flight noted this week its first Flight Cheetah system was sold 10 years ago Monday. The Flight Cheetah was the first GPS Moving Map system to provide satellite data link weather system for general aviation.

The satellite link that was used at the time was the ORBCOMM low earth orbit satellite network. This network essentially operated as a relatively low-bandwidth two-way connection in the sky, where the pilot would request and receive weather. It also had the ability to send and receive e-mails as well as send out position reports. Several years later this feature was used by Erik Lindbergh while flying across the Atlantic to send position reports and send and receive e-mail communications.

About five years ago, the Flight Cheetah switched to the XM weather system and was the first -- and still only, True Flight notes -- company to use data link winds aloft data to automatically show the pilot both the fastest and the most fuel-efficient flight levels.

"I remember that first year that we started selling data link weather systems. It was so foreign to pilots that it created many unusual situations," recounted True Flight president Robert Kalberer. "In that first year I think one story summed it up best.

"One of our customers was flying IFR enroute from Pueblo, CO to Wichita, KS and he could see about 100 miles west of Wichita that there was a massive storm. He told the controller that there was no way that he could get to Wichita on his current flight plan. When the controller asked him how he could see what was 400 miles ahead of him, he joked, and said he had his 400 mile radar turned on, then explained he was receiving live weather through a satellite.

"The controller was shocked that such a thing existed, and just at that point, the pilot of a commercial airliner (wasting no time to adopt this new technology) broke in and asked the pilot where the storm front was. The commercial airliner pilot then requested changes in his route to avoid the storm. Little did his passengers know that they were being guided by a pilot in a Piper Comanche all the way back from Pueblo, CO!"

FMI: www.aviationsafety.com