Knowing how your aircraft are flying no matter where they are is no longer a luxury reserved for large helicopter fleets with cash to burn. Thanks to New Zealand-based aviation specialists Spidertracks, real-time tracking and flight data are available to anyone, anywhere. But there’s a key difference in how the company offers it–by keeping it simple.
Despite being the largest provider of portable aircraft tracking in the world, everything the company does–from product design to how they do the dishes in the office–revolves around the core concept of simplicity.
Spidertracks CEO Dave Blackwell said this translates into a product and service that delivers a truly delightful experience for customers.
Since its first product (the Spider 1, released in 2007), the company’s offering has evolved with industry requirements and customer demand. In 2016 Spidertracks is looking closer at flight data monitoring, but it hasn’t lost sight of what drove customers to it in the first place–simplicity.
Flight tracking is one of the fastest-evolving areas of aviation. Driven largely by recent events involving missing aircraft, operators are increasingly looking to ensure they know where their aircraft are all the time, not just in the rare event of an emergency.
“In the past, it’s all been about finding out where an aircraft is and where it’s been, but it’s bigger than that. We’re now working on solving the problem of knowing what an aircraft is doing when you can’t see it,” said Todd O’Hara, helicopter pilot and marketing and communications manager. “We’re already able to show where the aircraft is flying, no matter where it is in the world. But we’re going further than that. Soon we will be able to show how it’s flying, where it’s heading, when it’s scheduled to arrive, where it’s going after that, and who’s onboard.”
Spidertracks’ commitment to increasing customer value has seen the company almost double in size in the past year. Blackwell explained the company’s growing team is largely made up of front line personnel and world class technology specialists dedicated to delivering features that expand the capability of Spiders people already own.
These features include automatically detecting if an aircraft has entered an autorotation and sending an alert to flight followers or recording what an aircraft is doing at one-second intervals–so it can be played back later to review exactly how the aircraft was being flown.
The revamp of one of the company’s existing features is Spidertxt–a two-way messaging service through the Spider which gives an operator a reliable and constant channel of communication right into the cockpit from anywhere in the world.
Spidertracks was born out of a 2005 helicopter incident which claimed the life of a prominent New Zealander. The helicopter was found less than five kilometers (about three miles) from a nearby town after 15 days and 975 flying hours of searching. The emergency locator transmitter (ELT) antenna had sheared off and failed to send out any signals–an avoidable situation that triggered a few creative brains to come up with a simple and affordable way to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Since then, Spidertracks has gone on to track over five million hours of flying. Blackwell said the average flight duration of two-and-a-half hours equals roughly two million separate flights in eight years–or almost 700 flights a day around the world.
“Our biggest challenge introducing people to Spidertracks has been the concept that just because you can’t see an aircraft outside, it doesn’t mean you can’t see what it’s doing,” he explained. “When people are able to see and track their assets remotely on a screen, they are able to effectively manage them.”
“When aircraft first flew, they weren’t able to go beyond line-of-sight. As their range increased, radio was adapted to allow aircraft to remain in contact with their bases. But once aircraft were able to operate beyond radio coverage, the industry just accepted that you couldn’t communicate with or manage an aircraft when it was in the air. The idea that we can allow operators to be connected to their aircraft from anywhere in the world really changes the game for them.
“We continue to find innovative ways to use the flight data we already have to deliver greater value to the operator. Spidertracks is fast moving from a ‘box on the dash’ to a fleet management and business efficiency system for airlines, air forces, tourism, law enforcement, emergency medical services, and petroleum exploration operators.”
The truly exciting thing for this company is that while it has already changed the game of the flight tracking market by making it affordable and simple, Spidertracks is not done yet.
Driven by the needs of operators who want more than a heavy, expensive, and unnecessarily complex system, Spidertracks’ engagement with its market and dedication to simple solutions mean it will no doubt be a leader of whatever comes next.
If you would like to see your company featured in Insight, contact sales director Frank Sargeant at frank@mhmpub.com.
