In the original news release, the airline wasn't mentioned. In the January 2024 investor presentation, it seems to have been. WestJet. Great choice, flies in the right areas, practically a tier one airline, 9th largest in North America by passengers carried, already outfitting their fleet with AFIRS SatCom, re-branding and integrating subsidiaries Swoop and SunWing.
Compare the dollar amounts from the presentation to those in the original announcement below.
Presentation: "
Expansion of NOAA Relationship... Installation of sensors and AFIRS Edge on WestJet aircraft; initial value of $500K, with the option up to $2.8M for additional aircraft. Installations to be completed in 2024."
News release:
September 12, 2023 – FLYHT today announced that it was awarded, through FLYHT’s wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, FLYHT, Inc. contracts valued at US$500,000, with an additional US$2.8 million in options, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to provide its water vapour sensor technology to help the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) improve weather forecasting and warnings. The agreement is an expansion of FLYHT’s long-standing relationship with NOAA and a recognition of the important role that aircraft-based observations (“ABOs”) play in improving weather forecasting and warning models.
The agreement provides NOAA with an initial package of FLYHT-WVSS-II sensors that will be fully integrated with FLYHT’s Certus SatCom and AFIRS Edge multi-channel WQAR for real-time data transmission. In addition to the hardware, FLYHT will provide ABOs throughout flight, including during ascent, descent, and while en route. The initial hardware, funded with FY2023 appropriations, is expected to be installed before the end of summer 2024.
NOAA is particularly interested in obtaining aircraft data to fill in gaps in data provided by other observing systems. One such gap is the geographical region off the West Coast of the United States and extending westward and southward into the central tropical Pacific Ocean – an area well-known for the “Atmospheric River” phenomena which can occasionally result in flooding rainfalls and heavy mountain snows in the Western U.S. Quantifying the amount of moisture in the atmosphere will result in better forecasts that will be of great value for public safety and water resources communities. To provide NOAA with additional humidity observations in this area of interest, FLYHT is partnering with an airline that flies routes and provides service in this data sparse region.
“We are privileged to have been chosen by NOAA to provide our weather technology to help it expand its observation network, especially in data sparse regions over the Pacific,” commented Kent Jacobs, President & Interim CEO at FLYHT. “This win further validates the value of aircraft-based observations data and FLYHT’s technology solution. We are fully committed to the weather business and to supporting the NWS in its mission to improve weather forecasting.”
Said Curtis Marshall, Ph.D., Program Manager: National Mesonet, Aircraft-Based Observations, MADIS Chair, WMO Joint Expert Team on Aircraft Based Observations, “The NWS Commercial Data Buy Program is pleased to enter into this agreement with FLYHT for new installations of FLYHT-WVSS-II sensors on aircraft that supply vertical profiles of wind, temperature and moisture. It has been almost a decade since new water vapour capabilities were added to the existing global network of aircraft that provide meteorological observations. Numerous studies have shown aircraft-based meteorological observations are among the most important sources of data for improving the performance of numerical weather prediction, and the full suite of wind, temperature, and moisture provides the most critical impact to model performance. We would expect these new installations to result in ongoing improvements to numerical weather prediction and the warning and forecast mission of the NWS.”
Real-time ABOs consistently rank as one of the most important observation sources for both long-range and rapidly updating short-range weather models that are used by a wide range of government and commercial users. Adverse weather presents one of the biggest risks and safety factors for aircraft operations and can impact flights as well as ground-crew operations and maintenance tasks, thereby creating scheduling and planning issues and safety risks. The FLYHT-WVSS-II sensor can provide better ABOs that can then be used to better predict extreme weather events and help to protect lives and property.