IATA is collaborating with inflight connectivity company, SmartSky Networks to bring digital services to IATA’s new turbulence mitigation platform, named Turbulence Aware. The Turbulence Aware platform is designed to help airlines mitigate the impact of turbulence, a cause of passenger and crew injuries, and of increased fuel costs, by pooling and sharing anonymised turbulence data from multiple participating airlines and thousands of daily flights.
SmartSky’s involvement will broaden the the user base of IATA’s turbulence management program, as the company is aiming to enable business jet-reported turbulence data for the first time. Business aviation flights do not currently provide automated turbulence reports, so this development will grow global live turbulence coverage beyond the data currently received from commercial airlines. Business aviation companies can now be alerted to turbulence for all phases of flight planning and operations.
Powered by SmartSky’s Skytelligence framework, and delivered over the SmartSky ATG network, the turbulence service will enable business aviation service providers and operators to incorporate turbulence data into a variety of applications. Pilots, crew and control centres can also use the service to improve the safety of flight operations, while passengers will experience smoother, more efficient flights.
“The IATA-SmartSky Networks partnership represents an important milestone in our global Turbulence Aware initiative, whose number of participating airlines is growing every week and as we broaden the scope to also include business aviation,” said Katya Vashchankova, head of meteorological programmes at IATA.
