Boston, May 28 2008 – Xsight Systems Inc., Subsidiary of Xsight Systems Ltd and a Van Leer Foundation affiliated company, a leading provider of airports safety and capacity enhancement solutions, has announced that its flagship product, FODetect®, an automated system for monitoring of airport airside surfaces, was selected by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for evaluation. The test is being conducted at Logan International Airport, Boston, with the full cooperation of the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport). The Foreign Object Debris (FOD) technology evaluation is being managed by Jim Patterson, Safety Specialist from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Atlantic City Tech Center.
FOD refers to any misplaced objects found on airport surfaces such as screws and washers, articles from an aircraft, soft drink cans and debris from ongoing airport construction or renovation. FOD presence on a runway or taxiway can cause damage to an aircraft's tires or engines, leading to expensive repairs, lengthy delays; it can also catastrophically impair safety. The direct damage caused by FOD is estimated to cost the aviation industry around US$4 billion a year.
Xsight's FODetect® is a real-time, effective technological solution to this costly and dangerous problem, offering a combined electro-optical and radar solution that performs continuous automatic FOD detection on airport runways and taxiways. It has a high resolution detection capability enabling the detection of small objects and all materials types. FODetect's unique combination of radar and optical technologies provides an airport operator both a detection and analysis capability.
Said Thomas J. Kinton, Massachusetts Port Authority CEO and Executive Director: “Massport’s primary mission is safety and security and we aggressively seek cost-effective technologies and new strategies to enhance that mission. We look forward to learning more about this and other FOD detection systems, as FAA’s testing continues.”
Xsight’s product is the only system with the capability to detect and react to FOD between runway movements, enabling detection of FODs dropped by an aircraft before the next aircraft encounters it. The system's unique configuration comprises sensors located on existing airport runway lighting infrastructure with no need for erecting elevated structures along the airstrip nor digging trenches for infrastructure installation. The visual verification capability provides a solution to FOD detection that has zero runway false alarms, and its dual technology solution operates effectively in poor weather conditions.
"We are proud to have been selected for this project by the FAA and to work hand in hand with Massport during the course of the evaluation. For years, Logan Airport has been at the forefront of exploring and utilizing cutting edge technology in all aspects of aviation operations. To be part of this environment and culture is an excellent development for our company." said Alon Nitzan, Xsight Systems' President and CEO.
Nitzan explained, "We believe our system will be attractive to airport operators because it provides for absolute real time situational awareness hence control of their main source of revenue – the runways. The location of our sensors on the runway edge lights presents the closest possible location to the runway and allows a clear view of the runway surface even in extremely difficult visibility conditions."
Nitzan added, “We take great pride in our system’s capabilities, and are confident that this is the first step toward the system installations in airports throughout the US."
Procedures and results of the FAA's evaluation are being monitored by Professor Edwin Herricks from the FAA’s Center of Excellence in Airport Technology (CEAT) at the University of Illinois.
About Xsight Systems Inc.:
Xsight Systems is a leading provider of airports safety and capacity enhancement solutions and has been developing this technology since 2001. Xsight has developed and commercialized a novel concept for detecting foreign objects on airport ground movement surfaces. Xsight Systems' leading technology is its FODetect® System.
Xsight has performed a FODetect® pilot installation at Sde-Dov airport in Tel Aviv, Israel with great success. The company is currently conducting a system evaluation with the FAA at Boston's Logan International Airport and shortly also with one of the leading airports in Europe.
Xsight website:www.xsightsys.com
Van Leer Group Foundation website: www.vanleergroupfoundation.nl
US Marketing Contact: Arik Fux – VP, Boston Office Leader
Tel: 1.781.330.8466, afux@xsightsys.com
Federal Aviation Contact: Jim Patterson (609) 485-4989