It is a contract which gives a sacred visibility. Orolia, an international company of 400 people with a turnover of 100 million euros, was created in 2006. It has grown in the world, through acquisitions. In Guidel, near Lorient (Morbihan), sixty-five employees work there, their main activity being the design of distress beacons for aeronautics and the military.
« The Rio-Paris crash triggered several working groups around a new configuration of the distress beacons on board, explains Christian Belleux, director of the site and of the aeronautical branch. Then the Malaysia Airlines crash in 2014 accelerated everything. “
The first beacon was designed in 1995. Since then, Orolia has come a long way. “We have developed a new model allowing rapid and precise location of an aircraft in distress. “
To the point that, since 2015, a consortium has been set up by the European GNSS Agency (GSA). Orolia runs it alongside Airbus, Air France and the Center national d’études spatiales (Cnes), with which he worked on a new type of distress beacon. “We landed a European technology commercialization market funded by Galileo. “
The consortium has made it possible to develop a new range of beacons, including the Ultima DT (Distress tracking) beacon, selected by Airbus for all its future aircraft. “This new beacon is triggered automatically, from the moment the aircraft emits abnormal flight signals. Rescue teams are informed in real time and can follow the position of the aircraft even before the incident takes place. “ What to give oneself the means to find the plane more quickly.
In these times of health and aviation crisis, the news is good. “Airbus still manufactures a lot of planes. And when we are on a device, we are there for a long time, their lifespan is twenty-five years. “
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