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Air Service Basel, Interview with Johannes Hoffmann

Air Service Basel has its own terminal at Basel-Mulhouse Airport.
In order to make the handling of larger aircraft more efficient, we were commissioned to set up a virtual fence.
This fence makes it possible to eliminate the need for physical barriers and still meet the airport’s high security requirements.
In the interview with Johannes Hoffmann, a member of the CAMO team at Air Service Basel, you can find out more about this exciting project.

What is your job at Air Service Basel?

Johannes Hoffmann: My main job is to maintain the airworthiness of our customers’ aircraft.
Among other things, this includes planning and monitoring scheduled and unscheduled maintenance work and repairs, the associated documentation and coordination with aviation authorities for planned and unplanned inspections.

I am also responsible for the company’s IT.

What was the starting point for the project with Bürgi.com?

The main business area of our company is our FBO (fixed-base operator), which enables us to offer our customers services such as handling, refueling or parking their aircraft.

1. For security reasons, ASB operates a camera system that no longer meets the requirements of our customers due to outdated technology.
   It was therefore necessary to replace surveillance cameras, which only provided poor image quality due to their long distance, with new technology.
2. Another project with Bürgi.com involved replacing an airport roller shutter door with a virtual crossing solution.

As the size of a roller shutter gate separating the area from the airport to our Tarmac limited the size of aircraft we were allowed to receive, we had to redesign the access and replace the roller shutter gate with a virtual gate.
We envisioned an electronic solution with cameras to be able to handle larger aircraft in the future.

What exactly did Bürgi.com do?

1. Bürgi.com replaced our outdated technology with high-quality technology using a method that enables high-quality image transmission over long distances.
2. As thermal cameras have the advantage that the number of false alarms caused by animals or shadows cast by flying leaves can be minimized, several thermal cameras were installed in the area of the roller shutter and the transition area to the airport was represented by a virtual line.
   However, this access point is under the control of the airport.
   It was therefore necessary to apply the operating elements of the gate to the virtual solution.
   For this purpose, the virtual gate was connected to the airport’s infrastructure and the physical roller shutter could be permanently removed.

In order to signal the status of the virtual gate to the aircraft, Bürgi.com installed traffic lights and linked them to the access system.

How was the collaboration with Bürgi.com?

I am delighted!
The work was carried out quickly and cleanly, especially in this unusual environment.
Despite last-minute changes to our requirements during the implementation of the projects, Bürgi.com’s technicians developed a solution tailored to our customer requirements and implemented it extremely satisfactorily.
Even challenges that are not actually part of Bürgi.com’s core competence were successfully realized.
For example, the virtual gate had to be connected to both the airport’s traffic light system and our new traffic light system for airplanes.

The professional work of Bürgi.com’s technicians, from consultation and planning to implementation, enabled us to realize our technically demanding project and obtain rapid approval from the security authorities.

Would you like to find out more about the Air-Service Basel project?
Click here for the success story.

to the success story

Published on 04.07.2023
Author: Matthias Müller

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