With the main airport hubs becoming busier, secondary gateways will come to the fore, dealing not only in an increasing number of scheduled flights but also acting as an important alternative for diverted flights. It is therefore crucial that accessibility to those airports in degraded weather conditions is enhanced. However, these airports have limited resources to invest in advanced ground infrastructure.
One option is to take advantage of enhanced flight vision systems that are located on board the aircraft and can be used by all aircraft types. Delivered by SESAR in 2018, the system can be displayed to the pilot using a heads-up display (HUD) or equivalent display such as coloured helmet-mounted display, and advanced vision sensors. These technologies provide the required enhanced flight visibility in certain visibility-limiting conditions. These features make the solution a useful capability for airspace users in the business aviation regional and even commercial airspace users, to access to secondary non CATII/III airport, fitted with PBN or ILS instrument approach procedures. This solution allows secondary airports operators with limited resources to reduce landing minima with no additional infrastructure and maintenance cost, provided the aerodrome has been declared suitable for EFVS operations.
The solution in line with EASA’s regulatory framework for all weather operations (NPA 2018-06), and is undergoing pre-deployment trials as part of SESAR’s Augmented Approaches to Land (AAL2) large-scale demonstration. Research continues on new emerging sensors technologies such as radar, in order to further enhance performance levels in very low visibility operations (see #PJ.03a-4).
SJU references: #117/Release 7
Benefits
- Improved access to secondary airports
- Operational and cost efficiency
Datapack