Gloucestershire, UK-based Chronos Technology has designed and installed a GPS repeater solution for Virgin Atlantic’s Engineering Facility at London Heathrow Airport enabling round the clock testing without moving aircraft outside to receive GNSS signals.
Virgin Atlantic’s top priority is the safety and security of its customers and crew, so fleet maintenance and reliability is paramount. The main purpose of the Heathrow Hangar is to keep Virgin Atlantic’s fleet in excellent condition, which involves managing and controlling maintenance tasks on aircraft, to include testing, calibration and essential maintenance which requires the use of the aircrafts’ GNSS systems.
The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals all transmit at an inherently low signal strength that cannot penetrate most buildings. The installation of a repeater system at Virgin Atlantic’s Heathrow facility has enabled GNSS signals to be always kept live inside the hangar to perform maintenance tasks that require the use of the aircraft’s GNSS systems.
The Chronos team undertook a detailed site survey to determine that the right repeater technology was selected and correctly installed in the right place to provide optimal inside GNSS coverage and no signal overspill outside the hangar onto the adjacent airport operational areas.
“The Virgin Hangar Continuous Improvement team identified that a GNSS Repeater system would eliminate moving aircraft in and out of the hangar to receive the GNSS signal needed for certain testing and function checks,” said Simon Mason, senior design and development engineer at Virgin Atlantic. “This would save significant time and resources. Additionally, it helps maintain indoor heating, reducing both costs and environmental impact. The Chronos Team were very professional, working closely with us to install the system with minimum operational interruption to our busy hangar schedule.”
Joanne Akers, Managing Director of Chronos Technology said, “Here at Chronos, we have considerable experience of bringing GPS signals indoors for both military and civilian applications around the world. We are proud to support Virgin Atlantic with a GPS repeater solution which offers significant cost savings and faster maintenance turnaround.”