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Did you know AIR SUPPORT delivers weather data to the meteorological institutes?

“We want to give something back to the aviation industry”

says Per Jensen, owner of AIR SUPPORT, the creator of PPS Flight Planning software system.

Grounded aircraft not only hurt the aviation industry, but also the meteorological institutes, as the lack of weather data means a lack in weather forecasts accuracy.

AIR SUPPORT has entered into an agreement with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) which misses the precise weather reports they have previously received from airborne aircraft.

KNMI operates the European Meteorological Aircraft Derived Data Centre (EMADDC). The data provided by Air Support enables EMADDC to provide quality controlled upper air wind and temperature observations. These are used by ECMWF and National Meteorological Institutes in Europe as input to Numerical Weather Prediction models. By doing so, the National Meteorological Institutes can continue to provide the high standard of meteorological services to fulfil their national obligations.

AIR SUPPORT receives data from all airlines that are active, i.e. cargo and regional flights. These are not affected to the same extent by the corona pandemic as many of the major airlines, which are forced to stay on the ground.

 

 

PPS | Weather report data

Number of radio occultation observations assimilated at ECMWF.  The numbers shown in the chart are for individual observations. Each RO vertical profile contains between 250 and 300 such observations, which provide information on temperature and humidity. (Source: https://www.ecmwf.int/en) 

Mitigating COVID-19 impact by AIR SUPPORT and EMADDC

By Jan Sondij, Programme Manager EMADDC, KNMI, The Netherlands 

COVID-19 has a significant impact on quantity and quality of weather observations and forecasts (WMO).  The reduction in air traffic resulted in a sharp drop of the aircraft-based observations available to weather prediction centres (ECMWF).  

European Meteorological Aircraft Derived Data Centre (EMADDC) mitigated this drop in upper air observations by rapidly implementing newly developed algorithms and ingesting data from various sources.  

AIR SUPPORT contributed by providing Mode-S EHS data over Europe using local Mode-S ADS-B receivers. The data provided by AS enable EMADDC to provide quality controlled upper air wind and temperature observations. The data is used by ECMWF and National Meteorological Services (NMS) in Europe as input to Numerical Weather Prediction models. By doing so enables NMS’s to continue to provide the high standard of meteorological services to fulfil their national obligations. 

Any kind of additional comment from a customer to our survey, is naturally highly valuable. The customer satisfaction for our ticket system show 95,1% satisfaction, based on 1436 feedback reports in 2019. That was an improvement compared to 2018, which were 92,8%.

It’s the same picture, we have from the annual customer satisfaction survey. Naturally, we have a high focus on the customers not being satisfied with our service. We analyze every situation and initiate corrections where necessary.

We have different KPIs, which we monitor on monthly basis and just to mention an important one:

94% of Customer service tickets received on a monthly basis are solved, actually we solve 1 out 3 inquiries within the first hour. That’s pretty good having our service level agreement (SLA) in mind.

It is also important to mention, that we have implemented a new ticket handling system during the summer, and for the time being the satisfaction survey module is not enabled. The new ticket system is phase one in upgrading our entire customer relations management system. The system assists that we can deliver even better and faster service and support to our customers in the future.

For more information call +45 7533 8889 or e-mail info@airsupport.dk if you have any questions.  

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