Flight tests validate Orolia’s GADSS autonomous distress tracking solution

Orolia recently organised a series of flight tests to demonstrate and qualify capabilities of the GADSS global aircraft safety program’s end-to-end Emergency Locator Transmitter Distress Tracking (ELT-DT) system, including Orolia’s Ultima-DT solution.

With these successful flight test results and the exceptional performance of its Ultima-DT system, Orolia is now the world’s first industry supplier to offer a compliant solution to GADSS Autonomous Distress Tracking requirements, as required for new-built commercial aircraft after January 2023.

This major European initiative has been led by Orolia with the support of French and Spanish government partners such as France’s CNES, the Spanish and French Air Traffic Service Units, the Spanish and French Mission Control Centres, the Spanish and French Rescue Coordination Centres, as well as two major Airline Operation Centers from Air France and Iberia. This was the first opportunity to evaluate a system-level implementation of the new Global Aeronautical Distress Safety System (GADSS), particularly its Autonomous Distress Tracking component (ADT).

This evaluation included Orolia’s Ultima-DT, the latest generation of Emergency Location Transmitter (ELT) with Distress Tracking capability. The flight tests were conducted in a business jet, flying along a trajectory across Spain and France. The robustness of the alert and tracking transmission, which involves the Cospas Sarsat MEOSAR satellite constellation, as well as the performance of ground reception and distribution, were confirmed- even with extreme aircraft attitudes.

These tests also provided the opportunity to review some organisational and process aspects, in particular the insertion of the Distress Tracking process into the general aircraft alert management process, including communication between Air Traffic Service Units, Rescue Coordination Centres, and Airlines Operations Centres in France and Spain.

Though test data still need to be applied to ongoing program development, preliminary results showed excellent system performance with 100% scores for the transmission/detection rate, as well as geo-location functionality. All stakeholders were able to receive distress information in a timely manner.

“This successful evaluation enabled all participants to collect large quantities of critical data in an accurate operational context. The maturity level of the GADSS distress tracking system, including Orolia’s Ultima-DT, has now been verified with the same level of reliable performance both in flight and on the ground,” said Christian Belleux, aviation product line director at Orolia. Ultima-DT was developed through the Helios initiative, with funding support from the European GNSS Agency under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant agreement No 687554.