Jay Clemens
Iridium Communications, CEO Matt Desch has called on the Federal Aviation Administration to transition to a new aircraft surveillance system by the end of this calendar year in an interview with Reuters posted Tuesday.
Desch told Reuters’ Andrea Shalal at the Satellite 2016 conference the agency needs to make a decision ahead of the scheduled 2018 date for the global airplane tracking system’s deployment worldwide.
Aireon, where Iridium owns 25 percent of the company, will offer the new service from 2018, according to the report.
Desch, an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 for 2016, told Reuters authorities that regulate half of the world’s airspace have made agreements with Aireon for the new service.
Aireon’s surveillance system will use Iridium’s 66-satellite NEXT constellation to transmit location data through the automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast standard that all commercial aircraft must have by 2020.
