WHITE PAPER: The Integrated Aviation Operations Hub

Author: Jon Davis, Founder and CEO of SkyNet Aviation and Paul Chevalier, General Manager

Subscribe

Jon Davis, Founder and CEO of SkyNet Aviation and Paul Chevalier, General Manager introduce us to an established business offering big airline Operations capabilities at reasonable prices

When SkyNet Aviation started in 2001, there was no Google Earth, no ADS-B, and very little satellite tracking. As such, the capabilities in the OCC for dispatch or flight following, were very much limited to the big airlines that had factory fitted equipment and big budgets. Since then, Skynet has grown in size, in range of solutions on offer, and in market reach. From Scandinavia, to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Australian outback, SkyNet Aviation solutions make fleet and flight operations easier and more efficient for management, operators, contractors, commercial pilots, cabin crew and ground crews.

With that history of success, we invited Jon Davis, Founder and CEO of SkyNet Aviation and Paul Chevalier, General Manager to tell us how the business started, how it grew, what it does, and where it will be going in the future.

Jon Davis

THE CHALLENGES THAT SKYNET AVIATION ADDRESSED

The real challenge was to deliver airline-like capabilities to small and medium sized aviation organizations at a competitive, affordable price. As with all technologies today, it takes time for new things to get into a cost regime that a wide range of people can find acceptable. We were able to provide a technology improvement in the operations view; the first thing that we looked at were all of the compliance applications such as flight following, scheduling, MRO, and crew management. They are the core elements that we wanted to get into the industry at the small to medium aviation company level.

We’ve also experienced quite an evolution not only from the aviation industry’s take up of technology but also in our software development capability. That is because, at SkyNet Aviation, we are software engineers at heart. We design and build software to meet the demands of the aviation industry. When we started, there was very little technology and we’ve adapted and changed to the point now where our vertical markets have also changed. We started predominately in the helicopter space and very small RPT (Regular Public Transport): offshore energy, oil and gas were our bread and butter for many years. Bristow Helicopters was a big client, plus we look after Hevilift PNG and CHC regionally as well as Babcock UK, Babcock Australia and the fixed wing operations for Norwegian Air Ambulance and Aerlink (pictured).

With our development of a comprehensive CMS (Crew Management System) platform, SkyNet is becoming a fully-fledged RPT service offering that is getting into the bigger fleets of RPT jet aircraft. For example, another one of our clients, ASL Airlines Australia, recently introduced the B737-800BCF into their fleet (pictured).

Photo credit – Lance Broad

Our technology is being more broadly adopted across industry segments, from small operators to larger airline environments, and that’s just because the software has evolved in capability. As the technology has evolved, we have evolved with it.

HOW SKYNET ADDRESSES THE CHALLENGES

SkyNet Aviation’s capabilities and functions are centered around the Operations Control Center (OCC), the Integrated Operations Center (IOC), or System Operations Command Centre (SOCC); whatever name your organization gives it! Those capabilities are strongly aligned with providing the whole range of OCC capabilities in a fully integrated operations suite. That means that we must integrate using live data from location information, we must integrate all of the aviation companies’ compliance applications whether that’s MRO, crewing and rostering or flight planning functions, as well as any other applications in use. Our capabilities are also enhanced by providing our clients with real-time global tracking using ADS-B/C, Mode-S data as well as satellite, ACARS, and cellular to create a true fusion tracking technology.

One of the key attributes that airlines need to run their business are OOOI (Out Off On & In) times. Those times are really critical in performance monitoring and all the metrics associated with it, including OTP. One of our capabilities is that we can provide the software platform to the OCC environment, but, in the same platform, we also provide the operator with the ability to measure and report on their performance. Our fusion tracking capability allows automatic recording of OOOI data nearly anywhere in the world.

One of the other main topics we have been talking about recently is almost a fear of the technology itself. There are a lot of organizations afraid or wary of taking the next step into digitization. We’re seeing that more and more as technology is advancing quickly: we are educators and we almost become a small organization’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO). We are providing them with a technology road map of how to digitize their environment for more efficiency and benefit, and that is absolutely key. That’s a capability that we possess through experience.  From the long-range schedule planning, to the OCC, to flight planning and dispatch, and right through to the flight deck, we know all of the steps in between. We know the functional business requirements for an airline and we believe that an airline or any aviation business is a business first. If you can’t turn a profit, you’re not actually in business. At SkyNet, we treat aviation companies primarily as businesses; we want to see them make money so that they stay around and partner with us for the long term.

Paul Chevalier

REACH^® AERO – THE INTEGRATED AVIATION OPERATIONS HUB

We came up with the name Integrated Aviation Operations Hub because it is our differentiator. These days, the capabilities of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and messaging between different platforms mean that there are many different software solutions that can send data back and forth. That is not new nor creative anymore, it is a given. What we’ve done is create a platform that we call REACH^® Aero (see below) which is our primary aviation software platform. It’s a web-based platform that allows the operator to control their aviation company: yes, we do flight tracking; yes, we do crew scheduling; yes, we do flight scheduling; yes, we do integrated flight dispatch. However, what we also do is take all of the data from those operations, like flight times, duty times, aircraft cycles, and we provide that to the operator in reporting and flight records and analytics, post-flight history analysis, all the data required for your business. It enables the aviation operations hub to be truly integrated with the operation that is actually being carried out.

Our scheduling platform allows operators to schedule their long-range commercial operations. The advantage here is that long-range schedule planning is undertaken in the same system being used to manage the day-to-day operations. Again, with the integrated hub, users can have one part of the business looking at the long-range schedule planning while the OCC is working on today and tomorrow using the same platform and having changes flow through. A lot of our clients do wet-lease flying with contracts regularly coming in and out and Reach^® Aero is a key component to handling their mix of scheduled and non-scheduled operations.

From there, we can integrate with the ForeFlight Dispatch and Jeppesen Dispatch products. The simple act of scheduling a flight in REACH^® Aero will push that flight straight to ForeFlight or Jeppesen Dispatch. Subsequently, ForeFlight or Jeppesen Dispatch can take over with either automation or the Flight Dispatcher steps in for flight planning, releasing, filing with Air Traffic Control, and making the briefing packages available to flight crews. Again, all of that occurs as a directly integrated, automatic flow-on effect of an OCC staff member who is working only in REACH^® Aero but having direct, automatic, integrated hub and spoke operation with all of the other parts of the business.

Once the flight is complete, the post-flight data relating to times, fuels, delays, etc., flows back the other way into the Integrated Aviation Operations Hub.

We are still able to send data out to other platforms and we do, quite regularly. We provide the data network for customers who use our software with other software, but what we want to show is that we have a whole of product, a whole of capability platform that is for the user’s business, not just their aircraft from take-off to landing. That’s the Integrated Aviation Operations Hub. As Jon said, we try to treat each one of our aviation clients as a business and consider how REACH^® Aero compliments and enables their business as a whole.

Jon Davis

LASAW

LASAW (Landing Approach Surveillance and Warning) is a very different product with more to do with ground operators, airport operators, and hospital helipads or offshore helideck operators. They are concerned with questions like, ‘what is the traffic in my airspace or who is coming to my helipad?’ SkyNet LASAW provides a lot of intelligence about who is coming to the helipad or to the airport. SkyNet LASAW can locate traffic with ADS-B coverage because we design and build our own ADS-B or LASAW receivers that can be placed anywhere at a very low cost and are very easy to install. They allow users to see air traffic up to 250 nautical miles in any direction. We also provide data logs about who’s been to the airport and for how long they were there, so it is a logging capability for remote or unstaffed locations. It’s designed more for remote airports or regional airports that don’t have a normal radar service so they can get access to that data. It means that that an airport owner can get some analytics about who’s coming to the airport, when, and why, and to support their billing cycles. It also provides safety for ground staff that could be working at the airport, on or near an active runway, in order to make them aware of inbound aircraft without having to listen out for radio calls. It has warnings and alerts, full weather services plus full scheduling information, where it’s available, on any aircraft that’s arriving at that location.

SKYNET DEVELOPMENT HISTORY

SkyNet Aviation started in 2001 with me as the founder and CEO coming from my background in RPT flying. Paul joined as the General Manager in 2022 with a background in airline OCC and Air Traffic Management.

The development history started with us providing a solution to the Australian Defense Force for supporting their long-range overseas transport capability. Aircraft were chartered to provide the uplift capability. The problem was that, quite often, these flights were going from Western Australia through Diego Garcia and up to the Middle East where there could be diplomatic issues going through different airspaces, weather delays, maintenance delays, you name it. Often, the result was delays or diversions costing tens of thousands of dollars, crew out of place, and the mission-critical, high-value cargo not reaching the intended destination.

The operator came to SkyNet Aviation with the problem and asking how we could solve it. We scoured the world looking for a very low-cost satellite transponder as well as an Iridium satphone that could be put on the Flight Engineer’s station on the aircraft Keep in mind, when we started this work, there were no Google Maps or MapQuest. We had to use static maps with markers on them to provide estimates. With the incorporation of the early SkyNet technology, the estimates became more accurate and the mission more successful. Due to the nature of the software, the tracking data could be made available in multiple locations, allowing all stakeholders to view the progress of the mission.

That’s where SkyNet started and everything has been built from that. From there, we built up the software into a commercial operation and got some early adopters flying aircraft like the Dash 8 (De Havilland Canada DHC-8) who were interested in new, cost-effective technology. But the need for military capability was the catalyst that got us started.

TECHNOLOGIES IN SKYNET

As a software engineering company, we build solutions internally, but the core technologies used in SkyNet include all the latest web technologies. We have always been firm believers that this type of platform needs to be web based so that it can be available wherever the user might go. We use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to be truly global in capability and scale. We have a big footprint in location-based technology because we have spent many years supporting satellite communications, whether on land, in the air or at sea. That can be broadband satellite or L-band satellite, which Iridium and Inmarsat use. SkyNet is a tier 1 provider for Iridium and Inmarsat. Plus, we now incorporate ACARS, cellular, ADS-B, ADS-C, Mode S, transponders and all of those location-based services.

In terms of other specific technologies, we are proud of our knowledge of modern API data-sharing capabilities, web sockets, and databases.

From an application perspective, we have evolved our capabilities in order to have the latest high-speed data transport capabilities to ensure that we can very quickly move large volumes of application or client data. This capability is a key enabler for platforms like crew management systems. Simple things like, if someone notifies they are unfit for duty, how does that affect the whole organization today, tomorrow, next week, or next month? It is no small task to re-compute all the rosters and overlay that on the commercial and aircraft schedule to identify where, when, or if, a problem exists. Modern technology is the cornerstone of cutting-edge development at SkyNet Aviation.

Paul

COVERING THE MARKET

Going back to the development history, I’m not too long out of the airline industry to remember when we were still having to install all of our OCC software applications on servers and local desktop computers. There was a combination of virtual servers or local installations on every PC in the business. The emergency operations center had to be a physically separate location with a duplicate of all those PCs and you had to go out every month to check that they were working and up-to-date with downloads and updates. Moving away from that concept has been at the core of the development history of SkyNet. We want to bring the full range of OCC capabilities online, at a lower price point, with higher end and faster functionality. We’ve got the ability to do this online, because that’s the way we’ve always done it, and we can bring that capability to the whole market, from airline size clients right through to the smaller operators.

Jon

We’re starting to get into a new area where there is fear and trepidation about taking the next digital step. The rate of change which has been happening generally in technology, not just in aviation but everywhere, means that there are fundamental changes on the doorstep for aviation businesses. A lot of them are taking a leap of faith even though they may not fully understand what they’re doing but they know they have to do it if they want to remain competitive. That’s our job – to keep them competitive, guide them, provide that assistance, and really reassure them to make sure that this will be the right decision, to be more efficient, make more money, keep your customers happy and be here next year. That’s our business.