Maastricht, Netherlands, 02/10/2004 -- As the aviation industry realizes the value of collaborative decision making, two technology leaders today announced an integrated family of products that will offer airlines the ability to optimize operations and manage day-to-day air travel.

At Jane's 14th Annual Air Traffic Control Maastricht Conference, Lockheed Martin, the industry's leading provider of advanced aviation solutions, and Metron Aviation, Inc., a recognized leader in aviation analysis and collaborative decision making (CDM) tools, announced an extended worldwide agreement to jointly market an integrated suite of the companies' CDM technology solutions. Potential customers include airlines, airports, and Air Traffic Service Units looking to collaborative decision making to reduce operational costs while enhancing performance, safety, productivity, and overall efficiency.

Lockheed Martin will offer the new FltWinds^TM/CDM family of products, integrating its FltWinds^TM and SPEAR^TM systems with Metron Aviation, Inc.'s Airport Flow Tool suite of products.

"The integration of the Lockheed Martin's and Metron Aviation Inc.'s tools and capabilities extend our ability to provide a cost-effective integrated suite of tools to airlines and service providers that will provide near term quantifiable economic benefits and efficiency through Collaborative Decision Making," said Alan Bloodgood, director of Aviation Solutions for Lockheed Martin's Transportation & Security Solutions. "This enhances the operational efficiencies of our offering and provides additional significant cost savings for our customers."

Both companies have been members of the Airline Dispatchers Federation for several years. "Having the opportunity to work with both companies, I am confident their breadth of domain knowledge, technological foresight and customer-oriented attitude will enable them to provide traffic flow management solutions both nationally and abroad," said Giles O'Keeffe, President, Airline Dispatchers Federation. "Metron Aviation, Inc.'s extensive work in the Collaborative Decision Making program from the ground up, and Lockheed Martin's proven track record for cost-saving airline and dispatch tools, as well as air traffic management, make for an innovative, dynamically fluent team."

Lockheed Martin's FltWinds^TM (Flight and Weather Information and Decision Support) system and its SPEAR^TM system are used for flight dispatch and performance evaluation and analysis. The suite of products is used by airlines to manage their fleet of aircraft and daily flight schedules. The FltWinds^TM systems provides a situational awareness to airline flight dispatchers allowing them to make smart routing decisions with flight monitoring and weather prediction technologies. The FltWinds^TM application features aviation weather data management, advanced aviation weather management, weather management and alerting services, sophisticated mapping and display tools, and user interfaces that display both flight and weather information on a common graphical display. Launched in 2003, the product is currently being used by United Airlines and an international airline.

The Airport Flow Tool presents airport demand and capacity information in real-time through graphics and text, allowing airlines to analyze airport constraints and develop coping mechanisms. The tool displays specific flight information, airport arrival and departure rates, arrival and departure slots, and airport restrictions. Based on the display, users can determine whether a demand/capacity imbalance exists and take action to cancel, delay or substitute flights to maintain traffic flow. Prior to implementation, traffic management scenarios can be modeled and evaluated in a matter of seconds. The Airport Flow Tool provides common situational awareness by allowing users to view the same snapshot in time, thus facilitating collaboration and distributed decision making.