FINAL REPORT - Stakeholders - Ofcom

An illustrative example of airborne costs for point-to-point technologies is given in Table
5-12 below (based on work carried out for the European Commission).
Costs in £ HFDL VDL2 VDL3 VDL4
Baseline assumed HF voice or no
HF
Hardware
No CMU
previously
installed
CMU previously
installed
Cost of transceiver 41,600 34,800 39,800 31,700
Antenna (x 2) n/a n/a 1,400 1,400
Upgrade of Radio Control Panel
(RCP) x 2
Communications Management Unit
(CMU)
Upgrade of Communications
Management Unit (CMU)
Upgrade of Data Link Control
Display Unit (DCDU)
Integration, installation &
certification
n/a n/a 13,400 n/a
n/a 33,100 n/a n/a
n/a n/a 5,600 5,600
n/a n/a 4,200 n/a
Installation kit(s) 2,100 3,400 3,000 2,300
Service bulletin 4,200 6,800 6,000 4,700
Man-hours (80 euro/hour) 2,100 3,400 3,200 2,300
Total initial costs per aircraft (1
transceiver)
Yearly maintenance costs per
aircraft (1 transceiver)
50,000 81,500 76,600 48,000
4,200 6,800 6,400 4,700
Page 181
Point-to-point
CMU previously
installed
Table 5- 12 Summary of Airborne Costs for the Point-to-Point Technologies
It can be seen that costs can be of the order of £82k per aircraft, amounting to some
£900M for the European AT fleet (assuming 11,000 aircraft). These costs are for
retrofitting existing aircraft. Costs for new aircraft are generally much lower although, as
discussed later in this section, the rate of introduction of new aircraft is very slow.
Cost for GA users: Compared with the AT fleet, the costs for GA users are much lower.
Some manufacturers are currently proposing multimode radios with a capability for 8.33
kHz voice, VDL Mode 2 and other VDL modes at a cost of between £1.5k and £3.5k.
Given market volume, the prices may be even lower.
Unfortunately, such costs are prohibitive to many GA operators and hence there is
considerable resistance to change, particularly where that change results from a
requirement to be interoperable with AT class aircraft and where there is no tangible
benefit for GA.