Iridium Communications Inc. (IRDM)

[investinthefuture]

It doesn't look like anyone is posting here, but I'll post this anyway in case someone finds it.

I would say that the disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370 has just made the business case for the worldwide ADS-B coverage that Iridium will have available on their new satellite constellation. After this mess with not being able to find the plane, airlines will move swiftly to subscribe to this new service when it becomes available, providing global, real-time tracking of all aircraft.

From the Iridium press release on this new capability:

For Iridium, Aireon is the product of its multi-year commitment to establish an innovative use of the hosted payload capability that will be available on Iridium NEXT. The ADS-B 1090 MHz Extended Squitter (ES) receivers on every Iridium NEXT satellite will complement ground-based air navigation systems currently in use by seamlessly relaying, in near-real time, position and status information of aircraft flying over oceans, poles and remote regions to air traffic controllers on the ground. This new capability will extend the benefits of current radar-based surveillance systems, which cover less than 10 percent of the world, to the entire planet. The Iridium NEXT constellation, a low-Earth orbiting (LEO) system of inter-linked satellites, is the only system that will be able to seamlessly provide ADS-B coverage globally.

Including this new capability, Iridium's next gen service will provide global voice, global data, space based data, and air traffic control.