The Federal Aviation Administration has awarded Honeywell Aerospace a supplemental type certificate (STC) for the Sky Connect Tracker III mission management system on the Leonardo Helicopter AW109 and AW119 models.

These are the first of an expected 14 helicopter STCs for the Honeywell system that meets the 2018 air ambulance mandate and provides satellite tracking and communications services. The full set of STCs, along with complementary EASA certifications, will be completed in the coming months. The Sky Connect Tracker III is already certified on the Sikorsky S76 helicopter and Gulfstream IV business jet.

Enabled by the Iridium satellite constellation, the Sky Connect Tracker III is the smallest, lightest and most reliable global mission management system available today. Its dual-channel design enables simultaneous use of voice/data communication and tracking features. And the use of fully redundant operations centers provides industry-leading near-perfect network reliability. With new and legacy systems now operating on more than 5,000 aircraft worldwide, the Honeywell Sky Connect network handles more than 5 million tracking, text and telemetry messages each month.

Sky Connect Tracker III is the ideal solution for operators needing to upgrade their flight data monitoring (FDM) capabilities, including Helicopter Air Ambulance operators affected by the FAA FDM mandate that takes effect in April 2018. The mandate will require operators to capture data according to a broadly defined set of parameters including information pertaining to the aircraft’s state (heading, altitude and attitude) and condition (rotor blades, transmission, engine parameters and flight controls).

The Sky Connect Tracker III transceiver gives operators the ability to capture all of the FDM data parameters needed and download them quickly and conveniently.