Acquisition and Delivery of Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) intends on entering into a contract with FLYHT Aerospace Solutions Ltd. for its requirement to collect and deliver one (1) month of upper air meteorological data from aircraft including each of the several priority airlines/fleets. This data will be used for data quality testing purposes, which will be conducted by ECCC-Meteorological Service of Canada’s (MSC) Canadian Center for Meteorological and Environmental Prediction (CCMEP).

Depending on of the level of Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay (AMDAR) compatibility of the various airlines/aircraft of interest, the work required to obtain and deliver the data will be conducted in phases.

Additional optional services/deliverables, referred to as Optional Requirements, may be required to potentially facilitate expanded and continued data supply that is pending data quality testing results. 

The Work will involve the following:

Firm Requirement:

For First Air and Canadian North, the work is to be conducted in the following stages:

Stage 1 – Software Development

Specialized AMDAR software is required to be installed and run upon the aircraft avionics systems. This software accesses information from the aircraft data bus and prepares specially encoded messages for transmission to the Meteorological Service. This stage of the process involves development of the software (as required)

Stage 2 – Aircraft Configuration & File Delivery

This stage of the contract involves any customized modification of the AMDAR software (if required) to the specific aircraft, as well as installation of the software on each aircraft.

Stage 3 – Data Acquisition & Delivery

This stage of the contract involves the collection and transmission of a total of one (1) month of AMDAR data from the priority aircraft/fleets to CCMEP in near real-time. 

The AMDAR messages will contain the mandatory parameters of the basic AMDAR program including:

• Non-meteorological: aircraft ID, latitude, longitude, altitude, date, time, roll and pitch angles
• Meteorological: pressure altitude, wind direction, wind speed, temperature, humidity* (*if/where possible), and others that are to be determined where capability exists.

The AMDAR Data must be coded as specified by the ARINC 620 standard and provided to CCMEP in near real-time. Data shall also include an encrypted aircraft ID code (which must be unique to that aircraft in all AMDAR reports) in place of the aircraft registration number.

Optional Requirements:

AMDAR Data Quality Testing

There may be additional airlines/fleets which are serviced by the Contractor that ECCC-MSC may be interested in testing the associated AMDAR data quality. Additional AMDAR development and/or data provisioning may be requested.

For the additional airlines/fleet where an existing AMDAR system doesn’t already exist (e.g.Canadian North - Boeing 737-300), data quality testing will require the full three stages of development as identified in section 3.2 (i.e. 1-software development, 2-aircraft configuration and file delivery, and 3-data acquisition and delivery). 

AMDAR Implementation and Data Provisioning

If the AMDAR data quality from the priority airlines meet the requirements for ECCC-MSC’s meteorological purposes (to be determined by CCMEP), an expansion of the services may be requested. This expansion in services may include the installation of the AMDAR software on the remainder of the aircrafts from each of the priority fleets; as well as continuous provision of AMDAR data from each aircraft on a monthly basis by fiscal year.