Our Success Stories: American Airlines
American and its affiliates American Eagle and AmericanConnection, provide jet service to destinations throughout North America, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe and the Pacific; serving 250 cities in 40 countries with a fleet of more than 1,000 aircraft. In 2001, American and its affiliates combined to carry more than 98 million passengers. American chose an Avtec solution over several other vendors to strengthen its airport operation and logistics communication infrastructure in System Operation, Aircraft Maintenance, and Ramp Control.
Avtec’s DSPatch communication system at American Airlines System Operation Center (SOC) in Fort Worth, Texas, enables flight dispatchers and load controllers to communicate via a disparate communication infrastructure including conventional UHF, VHF air to ground, ARINC VHF and HF networks and SELCAL. American Airlines maintenance controllers at Miami, Chicago O’Hare, and New York’s JFK airports use their ARINC ACARS system to monitor aircraft sensors continually. Then, using DSPatch, they can communicate with pilots and ground personnel regarding the collected data and statistics. Ramp controllers at St. Louis Lambert International and Los Angeles International airports communicate with SOC and ground services using Avtec’s DSPatch system integrated with American’s Direct Connect network.
American Airlines chose Avtec over other vendors because of Avtec’s unique approach to partnering with its customers before, during, and after the system has been installed. Before Avtec, American was struggling to meet its communication needs, finding that prior communication solutions could not meet American’s requirements.
Rich Farr, American Airlines senior manager of radio engineering, says he loves the people and reliability of Avtec. Avtec’s software upgrades, distributed on a consistent basis, improve the reliability and maintainability of the product. He also cites Avtec’s responsiveness and American Airlines reduced per unit maintenance costs as other reasons the airline continues to use Avtec’s DSPatch systems. The ability to perform maintenance on the system or one console position at a time, without taking the entire communication system down, is very important to the airline.
Farr says he has experienced superb service from Avtec. He adds that DSPatch has enabled American Airlines to standardize its global operations. Standardization is important to him because it enables the airline to:
- Simplify maintenance logistics by using one reliable communication system instead of the previous three systems;
- Provide a single vendor contact for ease of communications and better customer service; and
- Minimize training costs because all of Avtec’s console positions generally operate the same way regardless of configuration.
What’s on the horizon? Farr says he is planning more DSPatch installations in 2006. In addition, disaster recovery is on his mind and is the biggest consideration for the future. Avtec has a solution for that, too.
