FedEx will have the technology to support an air-to-ground data collection and transmission system on 350 aircraft in its fleet within a year. Speaking at the Teledyne User’s Conference in Los Angeles this week, Bob Bouchard, aircraft development engineer with FedEx, said the company’s Totally Integrated Technical Aircraft Network — or Titan — will improve dispatch reliability and provide automatic updating of electronic flight bags (EFB), pilot access terminals and maintenance access terminals. The system consists of an onboard server, the pilot and maintenance terminals, EFBs, printer and Teledyne’s wireless Gatelink system. Gatelink sends flight data to a ground server within seconds of the plane landing anywhere in the company’s network. Bouchard said a hard landing at the company’s facility in Subic Bay, the Philippines, made the business case for the Titan system, which was partially launched a decade ago. The aircraft’s flight recorder was sent to the company’s Memphis, Tenn., headquarters to determine if the landing was within normal limits and therefore able to return to the United States. With FedEx’s delivery guarantee, a late delivery would have been costly. “You can imagine having 100,000 packages onboard coming from Asia at top dollar,” Bouchard said. “Just that one incident saved us about $3 million. That paid for Gatelink on every aircraft we have.”