Air Safety Week: Safety and Technology Trends

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Safety and Technology Trends

Enhancing Philippine Air Traffic Operations

EADS Defence & Security together with its local partner Integrated Energy Systems & Resources Inc (IESRI) has been awarded a contract to deliver an advanced secondary radar systems for air traffic control purposes to the Philippine Air Transportation Office (ATO). The system, which will be delivered by mid- 2008, will be the first building block of a comprehensive modern air traffic control network. The ATC system is the first employing Mode-S in the region. EADS Defence & Security says "the air traffic control authorities all over the world are faced with a continually increasing air traffic density. This situation requires a high-performance air traffic control system ensuring reliability, easily manageable logistics and comprehensive data exchange."

GEnx-1B Engine Gains FAA OK

The General Electric GEnx-1B powerplant for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner has won airworthiness engine certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. Issuance of the FAR (Federal Aviation Regulation) 33 certification follows an extensive two-year ground- and flight-test program that involved eight engines and two flight-test programs on GE's 747 flying test bed. During its development and certification program, the GEnx ran 4,800 cycles and more than 3,600 hours. "The ground- and flight-tests validated that the GEnx-1B engine will have the lowest fuel consumption and be the most environmentally responsible solution for Boeing 787 operators," said Tom Brisken, general manager of the GEnx program. "We are extremely proud of the engine's performance, and today's achievement is a great testament to our engineers and the entire GE team who have worked on the GEnx engine."

PRM at Detroit Metro Wayne County Airport

A Sensis multilateration surveillance system, Multistatic Dependent Surveillance (MDS), is being deployed for Precision Runway Monitoring (PRM) at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW). Sensis MDS will provide surveillance for simultaneous parallel approaches to runways 4 and 22, enabling Detroit Metro to increase its capacity.

In 2005, Sensis successfully demonstrated to the FAA that multilateration is a technologically sound solution for PRM based on a testing at Lambert - St. Louis International Airport. The multilateration system met the defined coverage volume, positional accuracy, and Modes 3/A and C code accuracy requirement. Following this testing, the FAA conducted a cost/benefit analysis that indicated that in addition to its technical strength, based on the minimal maintenance it requires, multilateration is more cost-effective than Electronic-Scan (E-SCAN) PRM. As a result, the FAA contracted with Sensis to deploy MDS for PRM at Detroit Metro Airport, in addition to the Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X (ASDE-X) system already scheduled to be installed.