Patent ID: 6990319

Claim:
A method of providing data from an aircraft comprising: continuously monitoring the flight performance of the aircraft during an entire flight of the aircraft from at least take-off to landing; generating aircraft data representative of the continuously monitored aircraft flight performance during an entire flight of the aircraft from at least take-off to landing; accumulating and continuously storing the generated aircraft data within a ground data link unit positioned within the aircraft during the entire flight of the aircraft from at least take-off to landing to create an archival store of such aircraft data; after the aircraft completes its flight and lands at an airport, transmitting the accumulated, stored generated aircraft data from the ground data link unit over a wideband spread spectrum communications signal to a ground based spread spectrum receiver; and demodulating the received spread spectrum communications signal to obtain the accumulated, aircraft data representative of the flight performance of the aircraft during an entire flight of the aircraft from take-off to landing.