According to Teledyne Controls, its new enhanced Airborne Data Loader technology is “dramatically reducing” operating costs of Boeing 737NGs flown by low cost carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle. Savings of up to $11,700 per month for the fleet of 42 aircraft are being realized, simply because of the time saved by engineers loading navigational data into avionics databases.

“Navigation database discs have to be changed every 28 days and typically comprise a set of six discs that have to be loaded manually, each one in turn,” said Aleksander Geist, senior avionics engineer at Norwegian. “If one of those discs fails to load, you have to start the process all over again. With eADL, however, the speed of loading is the same but it is automatic, which means the engineer can spend that time doing better things.”

Data is delivered to the eADL via a single USB memory device. For operators that wish to make the database process update even more simple, Teledyne Controls offers the Wireless GroundLink Data Loading system. This system bypasses the manual plugging in of the USB device by wirelessly transmitting software parts (including database updates) directly to the eADL from Teledyne’s LoadStar Server Enterprise ground system.

Arinc 615-3 onboard data loaders and Airbus’s MDDU can be upgraded to the eADL, which is a drop-in replacement for those units, with no wiring modifications required. The eADL also contains enough memory to store all required aircraft software parts, according to Teledyne, including applications and databases. The advantage of storing software parts on the eADL is that these are immediately available when LRU replacements are made or when software might previously have needed to be reloaded.