Iridium is inching closer to obtaining ICAO and FAA approvals that will allow airlines to use the satellite service for transmitting safety-of-flight messages to ATC on oceanic routes and over the North Pole. An aeronautical working group consisting of government, industry and airline members has approved Iridium’s plan for providing aeronautical mobile satellite route services (commonly referred to simply as AMSRS), which now heads to an Arinc standards panel for tweaking.
Once all the approvals are in hand, expected sometime next summer, Iridium would become only the second authorized provider of AMSRS safety service messaging behind Inmarsat, which has held a lock on the market until now. Airlines are excited about the arrival of a second service provider, some of them because Iridium phone calls are less expensive than Inmarsat’s, and others because the Iridium network of 66 low-earth-orbit satellites can provide truly global coverage even over Polar routes.
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