AirGator founder Amir Tirosh dies in plane crash

Amir Tirosh, who owned Mount Kisco-based AirGator Inc., whose digital electronic products guide pilots both in the air and at sea, died Nov. 22 after the single-engine airplane he was piloting crashed into woods in Wappingers Falls, N.Y.

A former pilot with the Israeli Air Force, Tirosh was reportedly en route from Orange County Airport to Danbury Municipal Airport when the plane experienced low oil pressure. He was diverted to Dutchess County Airport. The crash occurred about three miles south of the airport. A passenger was taken to Westchester Medical Center.

A native of Israel, Tirosh ran an information technology consulting firm in lower Manhattan for 12 years that served Wall Street companies.

In the late 1970s, Tirosh flew his first aircraft while serving in the Israeli Air Force. Years later, after moving to Westchester County, a network systems engineer he had hired, “got me back into flying” on a trip to Danbury, Conn., he said in Aug. 2008. As a technology innovator and a pilot, “I was looking for something where I could marry vocation and avocation.”

He had bought a global positioning system (GPS) product to use on his hand-held computer during flights. “I was looking for something interesting to do and I kept on being frustrated by this product that had promise but wasn”™t delivering,” he said. “So I decided to pursue that market.”

In 2001, he began developing his company”™s first NavAir product, a moving map that uses real-time GPS for navigation and flight plans. In the first of several strategic business alliances, his company partnered with XM Satellite Radio to provide satellite-fed weather information to the cockpit for XM WX subscribers. Introduced to the market in 2003, the company”™s NavAir product line also includes electronic copies of terminal approach plates for pilots that show GPS positions and altitudes, handheld computer or PDA systems and electronic flight bags that replace the voluminous guidance information on paper carried by pilots.

 

“We were the first one to deliver the satellite weather feeds into the airplane, the first to show GPS position and altitudes on instrument approach procedures. We”™ve expanded from that into what”™s called electronic flight bags” ”“ maps, charts, approaches. “Today we are one of the leaders in the electronic flight-bag market,” Tirosh said in last year”™s interview with this newspaper.

 

Though corporate cost constraints have left commercial airlines slow to adopt the electronic packages, they are used by “thousands” of private pilots and charter and freight operators. Customers include the U.S. Marine Corps, whose Osprey aircraft are equipped with AirGator systems for training and evaluation flights, the U.S. Navy, which uses the company”™s products on its Aegis test and development cruisers, and NASA, which uses NavAir on some of its space-shuttle training aircraft and astronaut transports.

In 2006, AirGator formed a partnership with Sirius Satellite Radio to bring its marine weather services to the boating market. The marine market grew to about 40 percent of the company”™s business.

He is survived by his family in Bedford.