Midwestern Hub Selects Exelis Airport Surface Surveillance Solutions

November 25, 2014

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Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) has selected Exelis (NYSE: XLS) to deploy a comprehensive package of airport situational awareness, decision-support and operations management solutions.

Exelis, a global leader in providing critical network solutions, will deliver its Symphony® suite of integrated applications to DTW. Symphony enables Air Navigation Service Providers, airports and airlines to proactively manage operations, enhancing overall safety, collaboration and efficiency.

Exelis will provide Vehicle Movement Area Transponders (VMAT) for airport ground vehicle surveillance, and Symphony® MobileVue™ for displaying aircraft and ground vehicle tracking data on portable devices such as smartphones and tablets. DTW will also use Symphony OpsVue™ for access to live gate-to-gate flight status information.

“As one of North America’s busiest hubs, having accurate and timely information at our fingertips about aircraft and vehicle location is important to safely managing airfield operations,” said Thomas Naughton, CEO of Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. “Equipping our vehicles with VMAT and utilizing the Symphony surveillance solutions will provide airport operations staff, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) air traffic controllers and vehicle operators with a common airfield operating picture at all times. Access to this information will improve collaboration and help ensure the safety of airfield personnel, passengers and crew during regular and irregular operations.”

“The deployment of the Symphony suite will provide DTW with an airfield operations management system on a single Web-based platform,” said Ted Carniol, general manager of commercial aviation solutions for Exelis. “Our data and solutions will deliver to DTW a critical network of information without the difficulty and investment of using multiple, disparate systems.”

As the prime contractor for the FAA’s Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) program, Exelis has developed a fused version of FAA flight track data. This data combines all available FAA radar, multilateration and ADS-B surveillance sources, FAA host flight plan and third party information for the most complete, accurate and timely view of the National Airspace System.

The Exelis VMAT devices became available in November 2012 when the FAA certified them as fully compliant with the stringent requirements of its Advisory Circular 150/5220-26. This certification ensures that the devices are properly installed and configured in airport vehicles, properly maintained, and compliant with FAA standards.

Source : Exelis