By Tracy Hanes,The Star
It took more time and money than Viraf Kapadia ever imagined to get his idea for a new aviation technology off the ground.
But after signing an agreement with Europe’s leading space technologies company this summer for its In-flight Safety Monitoring System (ISMS), Star Navigation Systems Group is set to soar globally.
Star Navigation was founded by Kapadia and trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Thirteen full-time employees work from its modest offices on Lake Shore Blvd. in Etobicoke.
ISMS is the world’s first in-flight data monitoring system that provides real-time information from air to ground about a plane in flight.
It will allow ground control to monitor trends and fuel consumption, predict possible failures, schedule repairs and detect the earliest signs of problems with the aircraft. The data does not have to be downloaded to be analyzed and a plane’s location is updated every 60 seconds.
Typically, commercial airlines have relied on in-flight data recorders (or black boxes) to record information about the plane and provide clues about what happened in the event of a crash.
“With current black box technology, everything is after the fact. With our system, you actually know of a problem before it happens,” says Kapadia.
Ironically, Kapadia has never piloted a plane; he’s an accountant born in India and educated in England.
The idea behind ISMS came while he was working as an auditor in 1983 in the VIP jet division of an airline that mainly served royalty in the Middle East. The airline relied on its pilots to maintain log sheets about fuel consumption, repairs, etc., but Kapadia found they were disinclined to do so or, if they did, their information wasn’t accurate.
“I, as an auditor, was never happy about having to chase them for the information. I thought, ‘Why can’t we get the information directly from the plane?’ ”
Kapadia and his family moved to Canada in 1988 and he started a small accounting practice in Etobicoke. But he never stopped thinking about his idea for an airplane data monitoring system.
Several of his clients were in the IT business, so he arranged a meeting to discuss his concept.
“In November 1999, nine people, including a couple of tech guys, investors, a dentist and a lawyer met,” says Kapadia. “Eventually, seven dropped out. I didn’t understand that, when you’re a small group, anything in aviation is going to be 10 times harder than you think it will be.”
He dedicated a small part of the office building he owned to the fledgling company and, in 2000, started searching for the right team. That same year, they filed a patent and, in 2002, the company went public.
“It was difficult to get good people to work for us, but we got two. One was an absolute genius at designing,” he says, referring to Dale Sparks, one of his accounting clients.
Sparks operated a management consulting business specializing in software development and systems integration. He is one of the co-designers and co-developers of the monitoring system and joined Star Navigation full-time as chief technical officer in early 2007.
“The first challenge was that we were a small Canadian company with $300,000 to $400,000 in start-up funds,” says Kapadia. “We were shocked to hear you need $1.5 million.”
“In the aviation industry, you need a pedigree and reputation, and we had neither,” explains Sparks. “You can’t manufacture a pedigree. We had to get to know industry experts and get them on board.”
“The industry is slow to change, but for good reason, as they are risk averse,” he adds. “They wanted to make sure the technology was proven and tested. We started going to major international air shows in 2001, before we even had a product to show them, so we could start to build familiarity and a comfort level. The biggest thing was educating people.”
The system was first demonstrated at the Berlin Air Show in 2010. Later that year, Star also tested the satellite connectivity and flight data transmission in extreme aircraft conditions, using ground-based simulations.
Although their concept and technology was met with interest, and Star passed the required, and arduous, international certification process, they were still meeting with resistance from potential customers.
“We’d go meet with a CEO or CFO who’d say, ‘Your technology is wonderful, but my airline fleet is worth $2 billion and you have 10 people. What if you go bankrupt?’ ” Sparks recalls. “The only way to do this was to find a big-brother partner. We realized we needed a big partner or we couldn’t move forward.”
They also realized that marketing wasn’t their area of expertise.
A decade and $24 million later, Star Navigation’s big break came in June, when it signed a deal with Astrium, which provides civil and air defense systems and services, with more than 15,000 employees worldwide. It is a subsidiary of global aerospace leader EADS, which also manufactures Airbus planes. The deal took almost three years to complete.
“They were concerned about working with a small company and performed a very methodical due diligence. Their strength, size and pedigree will open doors for us,” says Sparks.
“Astrium liked our innovative abilities, and that we were 10 years ahead of the curve,” adds Kapadia. “We had the visionary impact they were lacking.”
Astrium will market and sell the ISMS, while Star maintains ownership of the technology. That will permit Star to concentrate on developing more products, such as systems for marine and land applications.
Kapadia says the real-time data that ISMS provides will help airlines save money on maintenance and fuel, and avert disasters.
“Hopefully, one day, our system will be mandated on all commercial aircraft,” says Kapadia. “I’m looking forward to when it saves the first lives. That will give me great satisfaction.”
How ISMS works:
The In-flight Safety Monitoring System developed by Star Navigation provides a ‘virtual window’ into the aircraft.
The technology continuously monitors various systems on the airplane as it flies, instantly analyzing and transmitting the data and any incident alerts from an on-board processor.
Flight data is transmitted by a secure satellite link to a ground station network, which decrypts, monitors and stores the data at secure facilities. Alert notifications are automatically transmitted over secure lines to the airline operations or maintenance centre.
ISMS works to augment existing systems (like black boxes) to provide additional flight data and information to commercial airline operators.
The plane’s altitude and location are transmitted every 60 seconds. In an emergency, this would aid search and rescue efforts by minimizing the search area.
The system also provides a comprehensive end-of-flight summary report, containing details such as fuel quantity at take-off and at landing, oil pressure and temperature during various stages of the flight, cruising altitude and speed.
That helps optimize fuel management by providing data on the effects of late landing gear retraction, improper flap settings, excessive taxi speeds, etc. on consumption, and can identify aircraft components that aren’t performing at optimum level and require servicing or replacement.
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