Hi Everyone,

Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, is installed on all Air Canada Mainline, Air Canada rouge, Air Canada Express (Jazz), and Air Canada Express (SkyRegional) aircraft. It is an invaluable safety and communications tool. Air Canada was one of the first adopters of this technology, and it is used extensively.

The system is a two-way communication datalink between us - the flight deck, and System Operations Control (SOC) consisting of flight dispatch, maintenance operations control, load control, and crew scheduling) as well as Station Operations Control (STOC), and last but not least, ATC for pre-departure clearance (PDC) as well as controller-pilot datalink communication (CPDLC) which is gaining traction.

We also use the system extensively for weather reports and forecasts, runway condition reports, weight and balance figures, and takeoff/landing performance calculations, just to name a few. We can also send a datalink message to another aircraft in the respective fleet.

Further to all this, there is a constant downstream of how the aircraft is being operated in real time (engine parameters, system parameters, etc.) to maintenance.

If you ever can see into the flight deck from the first few rows, essentially any time you see us ripping something off the printer, it is coming from the ACARS system.

I hope this helps!

Cheers