ACR Electronics announces major deals for its distress-tracking ELT solution

ACR Electronics has secured deals to supply its distress-tracking ARTEX ELT 5000 (DT) solution with crash survivability to two of the world’s largest commercial aircraft manufacturers.

ACR Electronics says the announced deals establish its next-generation emergency locator transmitter (ELT) as the preferred solution to support production aircraft in compliance with the ICAO 2023 GADSS (global aeronautical distress and safety system) initiative.

The ACR Electronics product is offered to the market in combination with SKYTRAC’s autonomous distress tracking system as a complete GADSS solution.

The GADSS initiative recommendations are currently being adopted into regulations by regulatory bodies such as EASA. The key GADSS concept of operations objectives include addressing late notification of search and rescue services when aircraft are in distress, identifying the location of an end-of-flight aircraft position, ensuring efficient and effective SAR operations and assisting with timely recovery of flight data by providing an accurate report of the aircraft’s final position.

John Nguyen, President of ACR Electronics, said: “The two contracts secured by ACR Electronics to supply the ARTEX ELT 5000 (DT) to the world’s major aircraft manufacturers are a powerful endorsement for our multi-faceted distress-tracking ELT programme. It demonstrates the high confidence in the industry that the development of the next generation ELT 5000 (DT) will future-proof aircraft with a state-of-the-art emergency distress signalling and tracking solution.

“The ability to create a compliant system by combining the ELT-DT and ADT technology of sister brands ARTEX and SKYTRAC means the ACR Group is the only company with a full end-to-end GADSS solution for airframe manufacturers and airline operators.”

The system is triggered by a potential distress condition from independent aircraft monitoring. The 406 MHz ARTEX ELT 5000 (DT) intelligently activates and will automatically begin transmitting 406 MHz distress messages with the current location in real time while the aircraft is in flight.

The company says the distress tracking provides the precise location of the aircraft to assist the relevant monitoring bodies to respond to the alert quickly and effectively using the COSPAS-SARSAT satellite network.

It is also possible to trigger the ELT manually from inside the cockpit if necessary.