Company that develops black boxes for aviation opens new global headquarters in St. Petersburg
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Acron Aviation employees, a company that provides technology for aviation safety around the world, cut the ribbon on its new global headquarters in downtown St. Petersburg on Monday.
The backstory:
The move comes after Hurricane Milton’s high winds sent a construction crane crashing into its former office space also in downtown.
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"We decided we wanted to stay in the downtown area in St. Petersburg," Alan Crawford, the CEO of Acron Aviation, said. "We think it is fantastic in terms of attracting talent. We've got a large base of engineers, software, hardware, systems engineers. It’s great for that."
The company has about 80 employees in St. Pete and about 1,500 across the world. The new headquarters is situated near Albert Whitted Airport, a location Crawford said provides a constant reminder of the company's impact on the industry.
Employees can see planes takeoff from their windows, equipped with the very technology they develop, ranging from cockpit displays and airspeed indicators to the black boxes used to investigate flight data and cockpit audio.
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"It's also really a home of commercial aviation," Crawford said. "The first-ever commercial aviation flight was flown from here to Tampa, so we really like the synergy of being in the sort of home of commercial aviation."
Dig deeper:
"We build mission-critical products across both commercial aerospace and defense. It also helps our customers be more efficient. So, things like being able to have more efficient route structures, not have missed flights, keeping our war fighters safe," Crawford said.
The new facility features expanded laboratory spaces designed specifically for the development of flight recorders. Darshan Gandhi, the product line manager for the flight recorder division, described the move as a "big milestone" that allows for better collaboration.
"You can see the sea of offices where engineers can collaborate with one another," Gandhi said. "They can head to one of our labs to hook up our flight recorders and other equipment to imaging systems and really be productive."
Acron Aviation, which first established its presence in St. Petersburg in 2019, continues to maintain a broad international reach. In addition to the Florida headquarters, the company builds flight simulator training devices in the United Kingdom, and has a flight academy in Sanford, Florida.
The Source: Information in this story comes Acron Aviation.