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OpenSkies, the new BA subsidiary, that starts flying from Orly Airport, Paris, to JFK, New York on June 19, has appointed Lincolnshire based systems provider BYTRON as their flight management solutions partner for the new service.

BYTRON's systems are used by many major airlines and airports and the company is renowned for its eFlight™ and skybook® systems.

They are currently working with Rolls Royce subsidiary DS&S to incorporate their Techlog programme into the skybook® Electronic Flight Bag package, which will provide the most comprehensive data available to flight crews anywhere.

The association between OpenSkies and BYTRON means that the eFlight™ service and the provision of skybook functionality will exist within OpenSkies crew rooms in JFK and Paris Orly.

All crew room equipment, including workstations, printers and network infrastructure will be remotely monitored from BYTRON's base in the UK, providing automatic alerts about equipment and system serviceability.

VOIP communications will be utilised to allow crews to contact the BYTRON Help Desk and the airline operations department in the UK providing direct support when required.

The implementation of this service negates the need for OpenSkies to provide their own IT support in JFK or Orly and instead rely on BYTRON's proven track record in this arena.

eFlight™ is BYTRON's flagship product that enables airline customers' Flight Operations departments to support schedules from the planning phase right through to arrival at their final destination.

eFlight™ integrates data from a multitude of aviation sources and provides critical business information to end-users in a timely and efficient manner.

skybook® allows flight deck and cabin crew to access all data stored within the eFlight™ aviation data base ensuring they have the latest available information such as briefing packs containing the latest operational notices and airfield information, route plots, meteorological and NOTAM data and entire libraries of company and aircraft manuals.

skybook® also acts as a portal to an airline's already existing websites such as company intranets, thereby becoming a one-stop shop for air crew.

Due to the National Air Traffic Services ADIMS service being discontinued, NOTAM are now received from the Eurocontrol EAD system.

Tight timescales required a high level of co-operation between technical staff at both BYTRON and Eurocontrol, which resulted in the fastest connection to the service by an independent ANSP.

Congratulations all round!

Secure Access using smart cards has completed trials and is now operational. This upgrade to skybook® provides a simple method of controlling user access to not only the skybook® service but also to the crew room holding that service. Similar to your debit & credit cards, secure access smart cards are unique to the user and simplify administration processes on several fronts.

• Ease of access to crew rooms
• Ease of access to briefs
• Centrally managed automatic installation of company software, such as BLT and FOVE.
• Identify individuals for fleet/flight specific data.

All access and system actions are logged to provide a full audit trail.

The BYTRON ATCOMS FDMS with eStrips for both Area and Airfield is fully configurable on-site, allowing local AirTraffic management to easily set up the system to mimic the required workflow and practices. Design tools are provided so that the on-screen representation is exactly as required by local operations. For example, in addition to defining the screen physical size and resolution, a variety of visual cues are extensively configurable, and all steps in the workflow can be made either mandatory or optional.

This results in Controllers being able to move strips easily through an on-screen representation of a familiar work position, whilst updating the system, providing automatic updates to other work positions and also providing automatic statistics and a detailed audit trail. The application maintains all the features of ATCOMS FDMS such as Wheels up/down, Update Boundary Estimate and Hand-off but the controller's rack may be replaced by a touch screen and pen or mouse. Using drag & drop, strips can be moved up, down and between racks and a stylus pen can be used to make notes in the usual manner.