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Flyht surges after Malaysia jet highlights black box concern
TORONTO, March 13
Flyht Aerospace Solutions Ltd, a Canadian maker of real-time flight-data recorders, has surged 30% this week as the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jet highlights shortcomings of conventional black boxes.
Flyht Aerospace rose 11% to 73 Canadian cents at the 4pm close yesterday in Toronto, up from 56 cents on March 7. The Calgary-based company has more than tripled in the past 12 months, lifting its market value to C$116 million (US$104 million).
The jet operated by Malaysian Airline System Bhd with 239 people on board disappeared from radar about an hour after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur on March 8 en route to Beijing.
Onboard data recorders like those on the Malaysian jet store information collected in flight, so the units must be recovered to give investigators the fullest picture of what went wrong in an accident.
Airlines are looking for alternatives in the wake of the fatal Air-France jet crash over the Atlantic in 2009 where it took investigators almost two years to find the black box at the bottom of the ocean, and now the Malaysia jet disappearance.
Flyht offers a compelling alternative, said Dev Bhangui, analyst at Byron Capital Markets Ltd in Toronto. He is one of three analysts who track the company who all rate it a buy.
“Authorities in aerospace move at a glacial pace,” Bhangui said by phone. “It’s only very recently that the authorities have jumped on this. After the Air France disaster, this has come into high profile and obviously the Malaysian Airlines incident is going to bring it to a head.”
Maintenance information
Flyht’s technology can automatically transmit data back to the ground the moment a plane diverts from its flight path or exhibits other unusual behaviour, Flyht chief executive officer Bill Tempany said in a telephone interview today.
The software is not yet authorized to be used onboard as aviation regulators debate what the criteria should be for a trigger and how the data is transmitted, he said. Once that’s decided, the installation would be “weeks away” as it can be done through a software upgrade, he said.
Flyht’s AFIRS hardware box generates non-emergency, mechanical information about the jet back to flight maintenance crews in real-time, saving up to US$100,000 a year in maintenance and flight turnaround costs, said Tempany. The cost of installing the hardware in an existing jet is less than US$100,000 and can be done in a few days.
The AFIRS system is currently in use on about 300 aircraft worldwide and new customers include NetJets Inc., the jet charter company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which now uses it on its European operations, said Tempany. The hardware was not on board the missing Malaysian flight, he said.
