| | February 20178CIOReviewBy Hari Prasad HS, General Manager, Boscht was back in 2003, I was at the Flight Operations Center (FOC) at an international airline in this region, waiting to meet Mr. Sabesan, the person in charge of the FOC. He and his team were very busy handling an emergency situation. After about 90 minutes Mr. Sabesan came out, he was ecstatic and had a big smile on his face, "We saved 300+ people on board today, a near miracle" he said. Apparently, one of their wide body aircrafts coming from Maldives had developed a critical engine snag during flight and the onboard system had sent a message to their datacenter. The ground staff were alerted and they had analyzed the snag and were able to immediately upload new flight plan and divert the flight to a nearby airport, what otherwise could have been a catastrophic incident. Due to the messaging system & the associated diagnostic IWith 20+ years of extensive experience in leading large, global engineering, product development and IT centers/groups in a competitive and global environment, Hari Prasad HS is currently designated with Bosch as General Manager.Connected Aircrafts tools on the ground, they were also able diagnose and isolate the fault and keep the replacement part ready and have the engine repaired, and get the flight back on to its original destination. This particular Airline, being a forward looking and early adopter of technologies, had equipped a system (I was then working on) in their aircraft fleet which will monitor some key engine health parameters during flight. This system had a rudimentary messaging system called ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System), which connects to the onboard Condition and Health Monitoring System of the aircraft and relay few critical information to the ground using the VHF data link communication system (at 10-15 kbps). IN MY OPINION
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