Aloha Airlines equipped 12 planes in its fleet with AFIRS satellite data-collection and transmission systems from AeroMechanical Services Ltd. The AFIRS system uses satellite service provided by Iridium to transmit vital information about the plane.

This service is much like the many telematics offerings for automobiles that are available to track automobile data and then transmit it to a central location. Having such data available about airplanes in near real time could go a long way to making the skies a bit safer.