The Allplane Podcast #61 - flight monitoring with Albert Domínguez (SITA)

In the third episode of our airline software series, produced in collaboration with SITA for Aircraft, we explore a topic that may sound familiar to the many of you that enjoy spending some time using flight tracking applications.

It is paradoxical that, in an era in which you can monitor air traffic at any time of day or night at the tip of a click from your laptop or your phone screens, not all aircraft are tracked at all time when in flight. The tragic disappearance of the flight MH370 in 2014 brought this paradox to the fore and prompted ICAO to issue the “15 minute” rule that, by 2023, will require all airlines to have systems in place to monitor their aircraft pretty much on an ongoing basis.

What is currently the situation on this front? Are airlines ready to track their aircraft wherever they are? What technologies are there to fulfill this mission?

Albert Domínguez, product manager at SITA for Aircraft, will be today on the podcast to answer all these questions.

Albert is product manager for eWAS Dispatch, SITA for Aircraft flagship product for flight monitoring and analysis, and , as well as of Flight Tracker, a legacy product in the same category. An experienced professional in the field of airline operations software, Albert will give us an overview of the different ways aircraft can communicate with ground control to make sure everything is allright at all times.

Tune in to listen to today’s show!

Things we talk about in this episode:

  • Albert’s background and experience in aviation

  • Is it possible to track airlines all the time?

  • ICAO’s “15 minute rule”

  • What systems are there that allow continuous tracking and communication with aircraft

  • What is SITA’s eWAS Dispatch & how does it work

Interview transcript:

(please note that, although we strive to make it as close as possible to the original recording, the transcript may not be 100% accurate)

Hello and welcome to the Allplane podcast 

Here, with the people that are redefining the future of commercial aviation, as usual, before I introduce today’s guest, let me remind you that you can find all the previous episodes of this podcast as well as many other aviation stories on the Allplane website: that’s allplane.tv - allplane.tv

This is the third episode of our series about airlines and technology produced in partnership with SITA for Aircraft.

Is it possible to track an aircraft at all times during its flight? 

If you, like me, enjoy spending some time on flight tracking apps, such as Flightradar24, you are surely aware of the gaps in coverage that exist over some areas, such as oceans and sparsely populated regions of the globe.

But, one may expect airlines to have access to more powerful means to track their aircraft, particularly when those often spend hours overflying such regions. 

And, yet, incidents like the tragic disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in 2014, made it painfully apparent that this is not always the case. The good news is that there are technological solutions to solve this issue and, in fact, ICAO, the International Civilian Aviation Organisation will make it mandatory, starting in 2023, to make the position of every commercial aircraft known every 15 minutes.

So, today on the podcast we have Albert Domínguez to talk about this matter.

Albert is product manager at eWAS Dispatch, a software developed by SITA for Aircraft that helps airlines track their aircraft at all times and, in combination with other software solutions, can also help them optimize their flight paths.

With Albert we are going to talk about how flight tracking technology has evolved historically and the different technical aspects involved in maintaining constant communication with aircraft that are thousands of miles away, flying tens of thousands of feet up and close to the speed of sound.

So, tune in for an interesting conversation about this often underreported but important aspect of airline operations!

Hello, Albert. How are you?

Hi, Miquel, I'm fine. Thank you.

Very well, good to see you. Again, this is not the first time that we speak, because we have coincided in the past, in our professional lives in other aviation projects, when we were both working in completely different, different projects, but you are now product manager at SITA for Aircraft, you are a product manager for two products called eWAS dispatch and Flight tracker that we're going to explain now what they are, but the name, kind of give them away a little bit. We're going to talk today about how to track aircraft and all the technology that goes behind this, this task. But first of all, let me introduce you well, actually, it's better if you introduce yourself and you tell us who you are. What's your background, I will start by saying you are an aerospace engineer and you've been working in Toulouse, Europe's aerospace capital, also in Hong Kong, for a while, working for tech companies in innovation before joining SITA, but tell us a bit more about yourself.

Okay, yeah, thank you. Well, first of all, yeah, pleasure to be here. And thanks, Miquel indeed, it is not the first time we meet for different things, but always around aviation, but it's good to see that aviation it's sometimes a small world. So just a bit around myself. I'm an aerospace engineer, as you said, lived in in Toulouse and in Hong Kong for a while, I have always been working in software solutions, technologies for for aviation, for airlines mostly. And around a year ago moved back to my hometown to Barcelona, to work for SITA for Aircraft as Product Manager for eWAS Dispatch and Flight Tracker. I'm passionate about aviation, of course, that's, I guess, needless to say, and then about travel of course, which is also one of my passions, and some sports as well, specially watersports. And I've become a father two months ago…so that's a new passion as well!

Oh, congratulations! 

Thank you! 

So eWas Dispatch and Flight Tracker, I mean, these names kind of give them away a little bit, because those are basically products that help airlines track the position of the aircraft wherever they are in the world. And here I would like to introduce a topic that was in the headlines quite prominently quite some time ago, that's around the time of the sad disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370, which still hasn't appeared. And there was a lot of debate about how to make sure that aircraft are tracked at all times. We have tools now like flightradar that track a significant number of aircraft. But of course there is no coverage everywhere. And there's a number of technologies that can make this possible, I have to say I'm very ignorant about this technical side of how to track an aircraft. So that's why I think it's, it's great to have you here to shed some light into this topic to understand a bit better where are we coming from? Where are we now in terms of technology in terms of tracking aircraft? And what are the different factors that are driving innovation in this space? So when people think about aircraft, they tend to think well, yeah, everything is being controlled at all times. But I mean, then this Malaysian case showed that actually, that's, that's not the case, that was not the case.

Exactly! It can seem very, very basic. When you say aircraft tracking or record positioning, it can seem like it should be very easy for airlines to know where their own aircraft are. But it's actually not as easy, not as basic to know where the aircraft are, especially when they are in some areas that are away from any coastline and that are have 1000s of feet up in the air. So just to do a bit of history like, let's say, in the early 60s or 70s aircraft were not properly tracked or the response there was no reference responsibility for the airlines to track their aircraft it was more on the country on the ATC their traffic control of each country to track the aircraft that were in their airspace but the tracking capabilities were very limited so basically the air traffic control, the ATC centers, they had radars, but radars that were basically just as any other radar, they push a frequency and the frequency bounces on an object that should be an aircraft, but sometimes it could be a strong thunderstorm or another object. So then in the radar, they see the spot and they know how far it is and in which direction. But this was very basic, because they always knew there was an object but didn't know exactly what it was. And even if it was an aircraft, they didn't know which aircraft was it from which airline, which was the flight number, they didn't have any information, just that there was something there, then they were communicating, of course, via radio frequency with the aircraft, so they were speaking with the pilots, and they had to put together the communication, like what the pilots were telling them and, and what they saw in the radar and try to guess like which aircraft was which, right according to the information they got from the aircraft itself, and the radar. So this was very basic, but it was how things worked. And most of the time it worked well. Then, two things improved, especially what improved, it was the equipment that was in the aircraft that was on board. So newer equipment was developed. And it was equipment that was able to transmit the aircraft position through another frequency radio frequency that was lately called ADS-B. So through that frequency, aircraft were proactively emitting their position, broadcasting it, let's say, but not only their position, but also their identifier. So their flight number, and some other information

Sorry, if I can interrupt you here, one second. The ADS-B is the technology that is used by flightradar…you have like a whole community of volunteers, right? They have these receptors that can get the signal from the aircraft

Basically two big communities in the world, flightradar and flightaware, and they both work in the same way. They asked people that normally volunteer to put antennas on their houses, or on the roofs. So the aircraft, our products are continuously broadcasting this information. So the only thing you need is a ground antenna on this same frequency and protocol, to catch this information and then to send it to, for example, for flightradar. All these volunteers around the world have their antennas on their roofs, and then they are transmitting the data back to flightradar headquarters and then they display it on their website, and so on. This, it's community based, and anyone can do it. Yeah, jjust must have this technology.

And these the ADS-B is the signal used by official air traffic control, as well?

Exactly. It's exactly the same one, like the same protocol and the same antennas. Yeah. So these, of course, depend on the community. But most of the world today, it's covered by people who have their antennas. However, these are ground antennas. So of course, lots of places around the sea around the north and south poles are not covered or maybe even in some less populated areas like big deserts, these places are not covered by ground antennas, or what we call terrestrial ADS-B. And then what comes into the equation is satellite ADS-B. So these are the same in the aircraft, nothing changes, the aircraft is just broadcasting his position, its position. But here, it's satellites in outer space that are taking this position and sending it back to Earth. Of course, this data normally, is much more expensive because it needs us to send satellites into space to really read these positions, but it covers the whole world. This is quite recent, though. The satellite ADS-B has been there for a few years. And it's getting more and more commoditized. But it's a thing of, let's say, the last decade,

And who manages those satellites and this satellite link? because as you mentioned, I guess there are some costs involved. But what's the value chain here who pays these costs? And who manages these communications links?

So the value chain for the for the satellite ADS-B…there are different companies but less than a handful and the biggest one that is the most well known and the first one which started it's called Aireon, and these are private companies that have this as a business model, to buy satellites, to send them into space to collect these data, and then to sell these data back to airlines, airline providers, or what we call a ANSPs [Air Navigation Service Providers], which are basically the air traffic control from each customer or its air navigation service providers a ANSPs. So all these clients in the aviation world, buy these data from these private companies that operate the satellites and collect the data.

So they collect data through satellite data that is being broadcast by the aircraft in an automated way. So they are beaming this information. And the satellites have the capability of gathering this data and then I guess, then, kind of reselling it to two different actors in the aviation supply chain. 

Yeah, yeah. 

Okay. And then there is something I read about, but I'm not sure how it works. There's the ICAO, that’s the international civilian aviation organization, that has a ruling that came out right after the Malaysian aircraft disappearance that makes it compulsory to broadcast this tracking information, the tracking signal, every 15 minutes. That's why it's called a “15 minute rule”, I think, a 15 minute mandate, but what does it entail? Is it really like every aircraft that is flying in the wall has to be broadcasting this data every 15 minutes? How does it work?

So yeah, the aircraft are broadcasting this information, but even if aircraft are broadcasting the information if no one is reading it…so this, like, yeah, we cannot ensure tracking. So, basically, this mandate is from ICAO on the airlines. And it basically says exactly that the airlines have the responsibility to track their own aircraft. So they are responsible for their own aircraft, at least one position every 15 minutes. And then it has other specificities, in case like the aircraft is in distress, or if there's any incident, then it must be in a higher frequency, once every minute, because the aircraft has had some kind of emergency. This is a mandate on the airlines. But it's also a requirement for the aircraft manufacturers to build the necessary equipment to fulfill these requirements. So modern aircraft have already these capabilities. 

And this data has to be tracked by the same airline that is operating the aircraft. 

Exactly. The airline has the responsibility to track it. Yeah.

In practical terms, how is this done? I mean, is there at every airline a person responsible to track this data or team of people that are tracking this? Is it done automatically? Or is it outsourced to other companies? How does it work?

Normally, most of the airlines have their own OCC team OCC stands for Operations Control Center. So like the famous Mission Control like we see in NASA, where they launch…is the same for airlines, they have a mission control or Operations Control Center where someone or many people track and monitor the aircraft on the fly, they are not in some the smaller airlines, there it will be the same person who prepares the flight so dispatches the flight before and then monitors it during the flight until the flight has arrived to the to the game.

I was about to ask that…it's like, yeah, for large airlines that have hundreds of aircraft, American Airlines or Southwest Airlines, British Airways, it's kind of logical to expect that, but what about all these very small airlines that sometimes have 1,2,3,4,5 aircraft do they have also people tracking like all the time?

Most of these airlines surprisingly, yes…they still have maybe just one person and it's the same person that prepares the flight and that tracks it. But this person is responsible for the flight, since the dispatch till the flight has landed…and still there are some very, very small airlines…talking about something like one aircraft… that they do not have the capability because, of course, you would need a unit at least someone to be there 24/7, right? like a shift. So, for some very small airlines, they outsource and we are seeing in the market new companies that are kind of creating this service, of outsourcing operations and also flight planning. So all these outsource to external companies that have their own people 24/7 and that will do the flight planning and also monitor the flights.

Interesting. What about commuter airlines? Small local, very local, regional airlines, even executive aviation or general aviation, do these rules apply to them as well.

These rules, I think, only apply to commercial airlines. So to airlines that are transporting passengers or cargo for business. So it would not apply to private aviation or general aviation, but it would apply to business jets or business aviation because there's a, there's an exchange of money and mostly, they do have the same services. Sometimes it is very basic, just looking at the flightradar website. But they do have these requirements as well.

If you are operating in a kind of controlled airspace, it's easier than if you have to cross oceans and poles and all these regions where there is little coverage of further or ADS-B volunteers that are tracking it.

Yeah, for these cases, you have a third source of info of aircraft position, let's say, which is ACARS message

ACARS messages? 

Well, it's something that…there are two companies in the world, SITA is one of them, providing these services to airlines. And these are basically messages that are sent also via radio frequency, from the aircraft to the ground and back. However, these are private messages, there's a private connection between the airlines offices, or the airline servers and the aircraft. So it's not publicly broadcasted, these are private messages that the aircraft sends to the airlines headquarters to the airline route server through a radio frequency. And it's called ACARS. And these messages…there are several types of messages, but one of them is position. So the aircraft can send their position through ACARS messages in some of these areas that are not covered by terrestrial ADS-B. 

How do you spell it?

ACARS

And that's an automated system. 

Exactly. So, these are some messages that the aircraft can send, one is position, but the aircraft can also send engine reports or APU reports, they usually also sent the the fuel amounts, they usually send also, the triple o events: out of on and in, the four events of a flight (when the flight leaves the gate, takes off, lands and arrives into the gate). All these types of messages are sent through this communication, which is called ACARS.

Okay. And, so, this tracking technology, I guess it's becoming more accurate. And it's becoming more, let's say, reliable. You are one of the players in this space, you obviously manage a product, or two products, actually! you will tell us I went to the difference: Flight Tracker and eWas dispatch, both made by SITA for Aircraft. What can you tell us about the state of technology at the moment? And particularly the products you manage? And how do they work? And in practical terms how do the operators manage them?

Yeah, now so this world is becoming more and more of a red ocean of course, because it was a bit basic and…there was an accident and this mandate came

Sorry by red ocean I guess you're making a reference here to the blue ocean/red ocean competitive framework

Yes 

Just Just a note, in case people are not not familiar with this very famous book, I don't remember the author, called the Blue Ocean is basically when you have a brand new market opening up because of some technological change or some societal change and there is, I don't remember exactly the whole theory, but the field is open for for new entrants, right to establish a position and carve this market and a red ocean would be when things are already more more settled. And there's already several operators who are established in that market Sorry, just parentheses just because I found the reference quite interesting. 

Yeah, it's not even an aviation reference. 

Yeah, no, no, that's for business in general. It's not not just aviation, indeed.

So um, so yeah, I would say then, like, taking still these references, it was more of a blue ocean, like around 10 years ago, but it's becoming more and more a red ocean with a lot of players in the market with lots of providers that found that and especially when the requirement came, right? so if airlines are required to track them they must have a tool to do it. So more and more companies have developed their own flight tracking tools. The technology is quite advanced now that we have satellite ADS-B in place and there's terrestrial ADS-B there's really multi source for position. There are many ways to have a backup, and to be able to track so all the solutions in the market fulfill these minimum requirements mandated by ICAO. So now the game, let's say it's more on the extra features apart from tracking these aircraft, what other tools or features you can provide to the airlines that make your tool more attractive and that will help them do other other things that they have to do during the flight monitoring process or the flight tracking process? Some other tasks that they have…how can you help them? And especially if there's any incident or any distress, how can you help them manage that situation? As quickly as possible and as efficiently as possible? 

And how can you help them? So how does it work? I mean, you have, you actually have two products in this field, right? One is Flight Tracker, which, if I understand correctly, is the legacy product, and then you have eWAS dispatch, which is basically your flagship product in this space. Let's say, I'm an airline, what do I need to do in order to implement this and to make it work? And what are the benefits it brings about?

So regarding first the implementation part, let's say if an airline is requiring this tool, what they have to do first is to do some kind of integration. So ADS-B data is public and this is broadcast by the aircraft, it's collected by different operators, like flightradar and flightaware and then it's sold to third parties. In this case, the airline does not require to buy this data, we buy it from them. It's already integrated in the system. So that's something that we already do directly with the ADS-B providers. What we do require is to implement the flight plans, because airlines want to compare where the aircraft is and where it should be according to the flight route. And also in terms of fuel, like how much fuel does the aircraft have, and how much it should have, according to the flight plan, right. So what we do is to integrate with the airline’s flight planning system and to get the flight plans from their flights. So we can really show them the plant and the actual state of the flight. And we can also warn them in case there's something unusual, some unusual event or some incident or distress.

In that regard, I just wanted to introduce…I mentioned another episode of this podcast, where I spoke with a colleague of yours, we talked about the eWAS pilot product, that it basically helps airlines avoid adverse weather events. How does it connect one with the other? So when you mentioned these unusual events, I imagined the weather must be one of the expected ones. What's the link here between eWAS Dispatch, and eWAS Pilot? And are you using the same technology? Do you need to have both to be able to to avoid these extreme weather events? Or what can you tell us here?

So ideally, I mean, having both is, of course, better. But let's say let's put an example to see how this works in flight. If the aircraft let's say the aircraft takes off, and after a few hours in cruise, it's expecting to go through a thunderstorm. The pilot, if he or she is using eWAS Pilot, they will see this thunderstorm ahead of them. They will see also when they are really close when they get closer in the aircraft radar, because in the radar, we could see the thunderstorm but they will see it earlier if they have the obligation if they have the weather forecast, they could see earlier and they could see also more accurate they could see the whole turbulence area and not only the range of the radar. But at the same time on the ground, someone from the airline is tracking that aircraft. And that person on the ground is also seeing on let's say, on eWAS Dispatch, where the aircraft is and where the turbulence is, and they will see how the aircraft is going across that turbulence in let's say, an hour or two hours from now. There could be some communication here or not, let's say if it's a small turbulence, the pilot will make a decision to go around the turbulence on one side or on the other side and will not communicate with the dispatcher at all if there's only a small avoidance and a small deviation from the road, right? The dispatcher will be alerted that the aircraft is deviating from the road, but he will understand it for the weather because he will see it on the screen. And he will, there will be no communication at all, most probably in smaller small events between the pilot and the dispatcher, but they will both be aware. However, if there's a big event that the pilot has to go around, in that case, there will be some communication about the dispatcher and the pilot because probably the flight must be deviated, they have to decide on which way they should go around the the event that thunderstorm or turbulence or icing area. And there's probably even a diversion if that's around the destination or diversion to do. So they will have to decide together to which airport they they should divert these communication, it's usually it will be done through feel free text messages through text messages if the situation is not critical, and they have time to deal with it. Or it will be done by phone by SATCOM and they will talk and during this discussion, they will decide together which is the best option they have to react to that event.

So in those cases, the pilot would be talking directly with the dispatcher at the airline control center. 

Yes

Not with a traffic control. …I mean, he would be talking to a traffic control but separately in a different communication. 

Exactly. 

Okay. But this requires some sort of link. So you're feeding new data all the time during the time the aircraft is in flight. So it requires some sort of data link that has the capacity to handle this information. What does it involve? Are all aircraft capable of doing this or does this depends on how new they are? Do they need to be retrofitted in some way?

So, for the ACARS messages, because when they will be talking to each other sending messages, like an SMS let's say, this will be done through ACARS, that technology I talked about before…all commercial aircraft around the world now and that are still flying have this capability of sending acres methods. For a SATCOM communication, so doing a satellite call from the cockpit to the ground, would require SATCOM capabilities and not all aircraft…most aircraft I would say, a big part of them, have SATCOM equipment, but not all of them.

I was also thinking about your system and then the sort of data it provides on a regular basis. 

And in our system, yes, so on the ground, it goes just through the internet, to the airline offices, but in the air to have weather updates, it will require internet connectivity as well. So only a few aircraft today, I think it's around 10% or 50%, have inflight connectivity. And only those will get weather forecasts. However, the pilot will still be able to use, for example, eWAS Pilot, they will still have the weather but the last forecast they will be looking at, will be the one that they received just before takeoff. So there must be a difference in what the dispatcher sees on the ground and what the pilot sees in the air if they don't have in-flight connectivity.

Okay, but that would be in order to get, let's say, more rich data, like weather events in order to do the tracking? Do they require any internet connectivity, or they would do it just with, as you mentioned earlier, this beaming system.

With that exactly. And onboard GPS would be enough don't require any internet.

And that comes already with the avionics installed by the OEM. So, you basically provide the, let's say, the software platform to manage this data, but you don't need to do any retrofitting in the aircraft to be able to use it. 

That's correct

Then all this information, this tracking data. I don't know if that could be then used at a later stage to do some sort of routing improvements or issue recommendation, navigation recommendations…is this something that people do when they have access to all this tracking navigational data?

So normally, yes, but then, when we talk about this, which is like post flight analysis, another type of data comes into the game, which is QAR or FDR data. QAR stands for Quick Access Recorder and FDR for flight data recorder. And they are both used equally and refer to the same thing which is basically the famous black box. So the blackbox of the aircraft, right in case there's an incident, that records hundreds of parameters every second, this is much more than position. So for tracking for ADS-B, let's say there's only the position of the aircraft and the speed and an identifier. For FDR, we have hundreds of parameters, we have engine temperatures, we have aircraft position, we have lots of data. And during the flight, we don't have access to this data because it's being recorded only in the aircraft, but when the aircraft lands after the flight, if we want to do post flight analysis, we can download this data through physical download, or the newest aircraft, they have wireless download. So the aircraft arrives into the gate, this is wirelessly downloaded into the airline servers. And then they can do a post flight analysis for rerouting or for any navigation purposes with these data rather than tracking. Because yeah, it's much more, it's much richer in terms of frequency, and in terms of number of parameters.

And that analysis is something you, guys, do as well with your system. So that would be something up to their line.

That would be that that's something that the airline does, but also normally through external providers that collect this data because this data is decoded. So it's something that SITA does also but through other tools, we have a tool called data hub that provides these capabilities, but it's basically something that airlines do normally through third party as well as through other providers…there could be a full podcast on this as well…on post flight analysis!

Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, definitely…! Another question I had is similar to the weather one. You mentioned on your new website, airports, the conditions at airports. So that's something that you also provide updates to the pilots on what are the conditions at the destination airports or any diversionary airports where the aircraft might be ending up?

Yeah, yeah, we provide this information to both pilots and dispatchers and people in the OCC. So the observations which are called “metar”, which are the meteorological aerodrome reports. And then we have the TAF which are the forecasts. Usually for the next eight to 12 hours. So both have the observation and the forecast for all airports around the world, for all airports that are publicly available, and we provide these meteorological conditions to the airlines, doing, of course, some analysis as well, because these are messages that are kind of encoded, and are well known for aviation innovation and pilots, but not for everyone. So we do some decoding, we apply some rules as well, the airlines can have their own rules, some airlines will have different thresholds, like values at which they decide to land or not to an airport. And this really depends on the airline's policy and SOP, which is standard operations procedures. So we can apply these rules into the meteorological conditions and let airlines know if those airports are suitable according to their own policy or not.

And this is worldwide coverage as well?

And that is worldwide coverage, exactly, yeah.

Okay. So you're combining here information from many different sources, I guess. I mean, your colleague from eWAS Pilot told me, you have different weather providers, I guess airports, you're sourcing from airport providers, airport operators…?

This is usually from authorities. Mostly the FAA in the US, and Eurocontrol here in Europe are providing this information. Basically, airports provide this information to authorities and then authorities make it available to third parties through a web service or an API. So this is public information. It's paid by all of us playing . We pay the airlines, the airline pays overfly or airport charges, right, taxes and finally this is paid by us. It's a service that we pay as tax or charge, and then that it's made available to any aviation business.

And the eWAS Dispatch product is sold as Software as a Service. So an airline subscribes. It is like a subscription. Then they get access to all these services to manage this information, to this data…

Yeah exactly! the application, it's sold as a software as a service with a monthly or annual license fee with all the principles of a software as a service. The airlines use this tool for their day to day operations, and then the application keeps being developed. So new versions, between two are in four new versions every year are provided to the airlines with new features that they request or any new data that is being implemented. So part of the package

And having access to that would make them compliant with these ICAO rules, I guess…how is this compliance monitored, by the way? Is there some inspection? Are you tracking every position every 15 minutes? What are the practical aspects of the ruling?

So the ruling was created many years ago, but it will only be in place like it will only apply from 2023.

Okay, so it's not yet in place? It's just a recommendation for now? Well, I mean, it's a time horizon…

There's a time horizon for airlines to comply with. To be honest, most of the airlines already comply, and since a few years they already comply, but the mandate is to, it's to be in place in 2023. And from then…because it's not officially in place, there has not been monitoring, but the monitoring, we expect as any other side of the business, it will be through audits, I guess, by the same organization, by ICAO, I guess airlines will be audited and then the software providers. So as you know, in this case, will audit all the data as well, to verify that the application is compliant with this mandate. This is why we store historical data. So all the flights, all the past historical flights, or past flight data, is stored up to three months and then stored in other databases for longer for these kinds of audits or reports. 

It's stored by you?

Yes, exactly by the provider.

Okay, so airlines have one year, one year and a half to get ready for that. So I guess you, you're going to be busy next year, everyone that hasn't taken care of this yet is gonna have to rush to get something in place.

Most of them they have done their homework and also it has some benefits to track, you can really optimize your operations and not only comply with the mandate, so most of them and all the the big airlines, of course, have done their homework, but I'm sure, like everything in life, we will have some people going at the at the very end, we will be busy still.

So, for those people that want to learn more about that, where should they go?

If they want to know more about that, we have in our public website, on the SITA website, we have a place for the solutions where we have the details, and we have some materials that they can download to know more about the solutions themselves. And then of course, the next step after that would be really contacting us and getting further information from us.

Was taking some notes here during the conversation. And I'm going to be researching some of this stuff because as I said at the beginning, I'm quite ignorant about all these very practical aspects of commercial flights. And that's a great opportunity to get up to speed. And I'm going to be posting some links to these as well, to these international frameworks and technologies that we've been discussing here today…Well, thank you so much! As I said, great, great opportunity to catch up on all these topics. Very important topics. I'm glad that we were able to reconnect in this further original way here doing a podcast…yeah, thank you so much for being today here on the show!

Thank you Miquel and and, yeah, glad to talk to you again after some time. And thanks for this opportunity.

Pleasure!

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