Avionics
Satcom Direct taps SITA for flight info
Satcom Direct (Booth No.

Satcom Direct (Booth No. 1949) yesterday introduced FlightDeck Freedom, a suite of datalink services designed to let business jet crews use existing data communications links to receive content from the flight-information providers of their choice. The company has struck deals with Universal Weather & Aviation, Air Routing and Skyplan to provide en route weather, flight planning, text messaging and other data services to the cockpits of customer airplanes.

The business model is a break  from those preferred by the established competition in the market– Arinc Direct and Honeywell Global Data Center–which require customers to use their own content suites. FlightDeck Freedom will be the first service allowing business aviation to use the SITA network, a competitor of Arinc’s air-to-ground network. It also opens the floodgates to a variety of competing content providers since Satcom Direct is inviting additional partners to join the FlightDeck Freedom network.