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Fail safe aircraft monitoring and tracking

  • US 10,553,120 B2
  • Filed: 09/15/2014
  • Issued: 02/04/2020
  • Est. Priority Date: 09/15/2014
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method for monitoring and tracking an at least one exception condition aircraft under exceptional conditions, comprising:

  • powering a flight data recorder from an essential electrical bus which cannot be shut down under flight conditions without disabling other equipment that is essential for safe flight operations;

    receiving at the flight data recorder a data stream from a flight data acquisition unit specifying values for a plurality of flight data parameters while an aircraft is in flight;

    storing one or more of the values from the data stream in a memory unit;

    determining an occurrence during flight of an exception condition based on an evaluation of at least one exception parameter;

    responsive to determining the occurrence of the exception condition, wirelessly communicating selected aircraft data to a remote location external of the aircraft using a wireless transmitter; and

    preventing actions intended to disable or prevent said wirelessly communicating by (a) exclusively controlling operations of the wireless transmitter with the flight data recorder and (b) only allowing the wireless transmitter to be powered down when the flight data recorder is powered down;

    wherein the determining the occurrence during flight of the exception condition comprises receiving, at an antenna of the flight data recorder, a wireless coded message from an authorized person within the aircraft, wherein the wireless coded message is configured to trigger the wirelessly communicating, wherein the antenna is mounted within the aircraft.

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