Prague-based ABS Jets has been working closely with Honeywell on further enhancements to an in-flight weather awareness application known as Weather Information Service (WIS). The operator and its crews are collaborating on designing and validating new features for future releases of WIS.

The WIS application was first demonstrated at Brno, Czech Republic, in June last year on Honeywell's experimental Boeing 757 and later adjusted to become compatible with Airbus cockpits.

Using WIS on an EFB is said to improve the crew's strategic decision making, thereby increasing flight efficiency, safety and passenger comfort. This is achieved by a set of meteorological products complementing standard on-board weather radar observations. With WIS, the flight crew is able to graphically assess the latest weather observations and predictions, giving the pilots the option to adjust the flight plan in order to avoid areas of turbulence and thunder-storm clouds.

ABS Jets' CEO Vladimir Petak has been impressed by the results. “It is great for our flight crew to be able to have accurate notifications about weather patterns along the route; this is particularly good to deliver real time information directly to them,” he states. “It is also good news for the passengers, ensuring a smoother and more comfortable flight. I look forward to rolling this out throughout our fleet of aircraft.”

Adds ground ops director Jan Kralik: “We use the latest release of WIS on our iPad-based Class II EFBs. We are also actively involved in the evaluation of coming features and planned system improvements. Results are instantly reported back to the Honeywell team in order to be implemented in newer releases.”