AVTECH communicates an update on Aventus NowCast

AVTECH Sweden AB (“AVTECH” and/or the “Company”) today communicates an update on the ongoing and planned activities within the Company’s Aventus NowCast Business Unit.

Commercial update

As recently announced AVTECH has entered into a contract with easyJet Airline Company Ltd (“easyJet”) on the Aventus NowCast Full Flight solution, following a competitive Request for Proposal process. After closing of the contract the contract now enters into the first phase of agreement where Aventus will run in easyJet’s operations during a limited number of months, in which a thorough analysis will be executed to form base for a subsequent expansion of the Aventus Full Flight service into easyJet’s full network if certain performance criteria’s on fuel savings are met. No additional contracting is needed.

“As previously stated by our Aventus NowCast Business Unit Director, Jonas Saric, the importance for AVTECH of having easyJet, Europe’s second largest short-haul operator, as an Aventus Full Flight customer cannot be underestimated”, says Christer Staaf, the CEO of AVTECH. “The process of winning the contract took about a year and a half and we won the contract after an extensive process in fierce competition with, what we perceive, all the competitors in our market segment”, continues Christer Staaf. “Receiving the contract demonstrates not only our technical and commercial competitiveness, but it is also a good example of success in relation to our strategy to focus our efforts on key customers who operate large volumes. The easyJet process is also an example of a strong general trend where airline customers procure wind optimization services following competitive Request for Proposal (“RFP”) processes due to internal policies on how valuable contracts are to be awarded; basically to make sure that contracts are awarded to the suppliers that are able to provide the best value for money, irrespective of any special relations or interests that suppliers might have with the prospective customers. Even though RFP processes involves competition, RFP’s have the advantage of being relatively firm in the sense that the procuring airline has already aligned the relevant internal stakeholders, who are often many, on a decision to actually go ahead in procuring wind optimization services. RFP’s also provide the advantage in the sense that the timeline for the procurement process is more or less defined, as opposed to exclusive sales who often represent a long and winding road with an extreme amount of uncertainty related to if and when an actual contract might be achieved. The bulk of commercial work that we perform prior to RFP’s, i.e. what we often refer to as pre-sales, is still important as it is aimed at getting the customer interested in wind uplink solutions in general, and as it builds knowledge and confidence in AVTECH’s solutions ahead of when the prospective customer might issue an RFP”, continues Christer Staaf.

“Looking ahead on the upcoming year our main focus is to achieve profitability through a combination of cost cuts related to personnel, overhead, and meteorological data, and a continued drive to increase business volumes obviously. After experiencing third-party delays related to the extraction of FDR-data we are currently in the process of finalizing the analysis for our previously announced contract with airberlin, and besides airberlin we see a number of interesting near-term opportunities with several other airlines. Though certainly challenging I do look forward to 2016 and to achieve the primary objective that the company has set, i.e. profitability”, finishes Christer Staaf. 

Technical update

During late 2015 AVTECH implemented its expanded Aventus NowCast solution to cover the entire flight envelope of flights, i.e. besides Descent also Climb and En-route. In addition to a service that is more easily marketable due to several reasons, not least because the potential customer value of a "full flight" is far greater than a "descent", AVTECH’s new Full Flight Solution also contains a number of technical innovations that were not present in the Descent solution. One example is a dynamic auto-fill feature where wind information for nearby favorable flight levels is relayed up to the aircraft in order to offer each individual flight an optimized operation.

Another significant technical development is working with the Met Office in the UK to retrieve precise and detailed weather information through an Application Program Interface. AVTECH can send time and space queries for any position in the world straight to the Met Office’s IT Infrastructure. Implementing the Met Office Web Processing Solution will result in significant financial savings due to the heavily reduced need for hardware and furthermore it means a significantly improved quality/freshness of weather data available from the Met office to AVTECH and airlines.

Jon Croome, Business Development Manager from the Met Office said “The technology solution we have put in place for AVTECH is ground-breaking and allows AVTECH to access NWP model data for 4D flight trajectory globally.”

Looking ahead AVTECH is just finalizing the technical work related to the new Aventus NowCast Air solution, where wind information is sent to aircraft (ACARS) printers, allowing aircraft who are currently not technically equipped to utilize the automated Full Flight solution, to still be able to tap in to the benefits that are provided by Aventus. Furthermore AVTECH is currently finalizing a state of the art Aventus Management Dashboard which will allow customers to receive valuable real-time metrics, reports and graphics on their utilization and benefits from Aventus. Additionally AVTECH is working on a set of mobile device applications that are directed primarily to airline pilots, to allow them to receive strategical and tactical information on flights already before they enter the cockpit.

For more information, please contact

Christer Staaf, Chief Executive Officer, +46 (0) 8 544 104 80

Jonas Saric, Business Unit Director Aventus NowCast, +46 (0) 8 544 104 80

About Aventus NowCast

The Aventus NowCast™ system is a unique and patented system that enables accurate wind information and/or 4-Dimensional Trajectories for flights, making use of the very best in atmospheric modeling combined with the weather information that provides the highest value to customers in relation to granularity and how current the weather is, to create high resolution wind models and wind data packages for the different segments of a flight; a so called NowCast. Data packages are uplinked to aircraft to enable the onboard Flight Management Systems (FMS) to accurately calculate an optimized flight profile and the actual time when each waypoint of a flight will be reached. The immediate benefits of Aventus NowCast are airline fuel and CO2 savings, i.e. the solution is highly environmentally friendly. Aventus is also imperative for aviation wide Time-based operations, which is an area where the solution provides even larger overall financial and environmental benefits through the provision of increased efficiency and punctuality of individual flights and of the air transport system as a whole.

About AVTECH Sweden AB (publ)

AVTECH develops products and services for digital Air Traffic Management (ATM). Its customers include the global aviation industry; e.g. airlines, airports, aviation authorities, technology companies and airline manufacturers. By using AVTECH’s products and services, each individual flight as well as the entire airline operation can be optimized in terms of cost, noise and emission, efficiency, punctuality and safety. The head office is in Stockholm, Sweden with subsidiaries in Toulouse, France and an associated company in Dubai, U.A.E. AVTECH Sweden AB is listed on NASDAQ OMX First North and has appointed Redeye AB, tel: +46 8 545 013 30, as Certified Adviser.