Banyan Air Services
Sun, 25 Jul 2010 20:51:13 +0100
When the Garmin 495 was released by Garmin, it provided all the features of its counterpart the Garmin 496, but without XM Weather and pre-loaded City Navigator NT and gave it a smaller price tag. The 495 kept popular features such as SafeTaxi and AOPA’s Airport Directory data. With the new Garmin aera series release, the Garmin aera 550 is the perfect replacement to upgrade from the GPSMAP 495. Similar to the Garmin aera 560, the aera 550 only lacks the XM Weather. Like the 3 other aera series GPS’, Garmin has turned the aera 550 into a fully intuitive touch screen system, giving the user a larger screen than the Garmin 495 in an overall smaller unit. The aera 550 graphical Terrain page offer both overhead and vertical profile views of the topography you’re flying over. The database-driven terrain advisory feature offers TAWS-like color coding and pop-up obstruction alerts. Like all the units in Garmin’s new aera series, this piece of hardware is great for the Road Warriors as well as aviators, providing built-in Bluetooth and voice-guided driving directions.
Garmin aera 550 & Garmin GPSMAP® 495 Side-By-Side Comparison
Banyan Air Service Latest of Several FBOs to Opt for PASSUR Tools in 2005
Banyan Air Service is the latest U.S. FBO (fixed base operator) to contract for Megadata Corporation's PASSUR web-based tools to get the location of specific aircraft, along with their ETAs and other information.
PASSUR InSight combines national en route flight tracking with terminal-area tracking from its network of radars (FAA ASR-9s nearby airports), along with a next-generation graphics engine for tracking aircraft movement, and PASSUR-generated ETAs. Megadata says Insight is unique because of its use of what it describes as PASSUR's own national radar network that provides added precision in the terminal airspace, and because it is the only flight following program that combines national en-route flight tracking with runway-level tracking. It also provides live visual runway configuration and utilization.
PASSUR Pulse gives access to activity reports based on is own database of flight information, including detailed owner/operator information. Megadata believes this can give some competitive advantage to FBOs that use it, by showing such things as who fueled with competitors on the same airport, or nearby airports and how to reach the owners or operators of those aircraft.
Insight and Pulse can be accessed through the PASSUR Portal, which is the main access point for all other PASSUR web service, and which provides a live snapshot of operational information on a "web dashboard" of multiple information sets derived from the PASSUR database, and tools for instant information sharing and communication among all users.
Besides Insight and Pulse, Portal provides access to other PASSUR web-based applications for landing-fee reports, activity reports, community-noise software, visual-flight tracking, and enhanced CDM (collaborative decision making).
Other FBOs that opted for PASSUR in 2005, included Swift Aviation (December) for Portal, Pulse and InSight; SheltAir Aviation Services, (August) for the same tools; and in April, Megadata announced that all the FBOs and several corporate flight departments at Westchester County Airport (HPN) contracted for its web-based tools.
In July Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport purchased airport-tailored versions of PASSUR Portal, Pulse, and InSight. 01-07-2006.
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