System and method of providing OOOI times of an aircraft

A system of providing a retrievable record of the "Out," "Off," "On," and "In" (OOOI) times of an aircraft comprising:

• a plurality of sensors located throughout the aircraft for sensing routine aircraft conditions and generating parametric data such as received by a flight data recorder;
• a multiplexer connected to the plurality of sensors for receiving the parametric data from the plurality of sensors and multiplexing the data;
• a central processing unit positioned within the aircraft and operatively connected to the multiplexer for receiving a sample of the multiplexed stream of parametric data and demultiplexing the data and calculating the OOOI times of the aircraft;
• a data store positioned within the aircraft and connected to the central processing unit for storing data relating to the calculated OOOI times of the aircraft;
• a transmitter coupled to the data store that is operative to download data relating to the calculated OOOI times of the aircraft over a radio frequency communication signal;
• an airport based receiver that receives the radio frequency communication signal from the aircraft;
• and
• a processor operatively connected to the airport based receiver for receiving the data relating to the calculated OOOI times of the aircraft and further processing the data.

A method of providing a retrievable record of the "Out," "Off," "On," and "In" (OOOI) times an aircraft comprising the steps of:

• acquiring parametric data relating to the OOOI times of an aircraft during taxi, takeoff, flight and landing of the aircraft;
• accumulating and storing within a data store of a ground data link unit the data relating to the OOOI times during taxi, takeoff, flight and landing of the aircraft;
• after the aircraft lands at an airport at completion of the flight, downloading the data relating to the OOOI times that has been accumulated and stored within the data store during the flight over a wideband spread spectrum communication signal to an airport based spread spectrum transceiver;
• demodulating the received spread spectrum signal to obtain the data relating to the OOOI times;
• storing the demodulated data relating to the OOOI times within an airport based archival data store;
• and
• retrieving the data relating to the OOOI times via an airport based processor for further processing.

A method of providing "Out," "Off," "On," and "In" (OOOI) times of an aircraft comprising the steps of:

• sampling parametric data that is routinely sampled and presented as a multiplexed stream of data to a flight data recorder of an aircraft;
• demultiplexing the data within a central processing unit positioned within the aircraft;
• calculating within the central processing unit the OOOI times of the aircraft from the multiplexed data stream;
• storing data relating to the calculated OOOI times of the aircraft within a data store positioned within the aircraft;
• and
• downloading the data relating to the calculated OOOI times over a radio frequency communication signal to an airport based receiver.

A method of providing "Out," "Off," "On," and "In" (OOOI) times of an aircraft comprising the steps of:

• sensing aircraft parametric data from at least one aircraft sensor that is operatively connected to aircraft components that sense indications that an aircraft is out from the gate terminal and then off the ground in takeoff;
• receiving the parametric data within a central processing unit positioned within the aircraft during flight of the aircraft;
• calculating the "out" and "off" times from the received multiplexed data;
• storing the calculated "out" and "off" times within a nonvolatile memory positioned on the aircraft;
• downloading the calculated "out" and "off" times over a radio frequency communication signal to an airport based receiver for further processing after takeoff from the runway.