Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- The BWB has a long way to go before flying passengers, freight May 12, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 21. May 9, 2025
- Does an A220-500 need a new wing and engines? Part 2. May 8, 2025
- Embraer downplays tariff impact on 2025 results May 6, 2025
- JetZero readies effort for private equity fund raising May 5, 2025
Bjorn’s corner: Farnborough week
By Bjorn Fehrm
July 15, 2016, ©. Leeham Co, Farnborough Air Show: We have been at Farnborough Air Show this week, the highlight of the year for an aircraft geek like me. This year there were several interesting aircraft that visited the show for the first time.
Embraer brought over the brand new first prototype of the E-jet 190-E2 and the prototype of their military transporter, the KC-390. Bombardier had their first customer/production CS100 from Swiss to visit the show in addition to their Flight Test Vehicle (FTV) no 5. And Lockheed Martin had the F35B, the vertical landing version, come and hover over the airfield the days that were reasonably rain free in the afternoon.
One thing is clear with the new generation of Single Aisle aircraft: their high bypass engines dominate the visual appearance. Figure 1 shows the 73 inch version of the Pratt & Whitney GTF on the E190-E2 prototype. Huge diameter engine on a not so huge diameter aircraft.
Figure 1. The prototype E190-E2 with its Pratt & Whitney GTF engine on the Farnborough apron. LNC photo.
Bjorn’s Corner: Over the oceans, use FANS
By Bjorn Fehrm
08 July 2016, ©. Leeham Co: We have over the last Corners described the future Air Traffic Management systems as a combination of ADS-B and Controller-Pilot Data Link Communications, CPDLC.
What to do when there are no ground stations that can receive the ADS-B broadcast of the aircraft’s position and where it’s going? Or the aircraft’s VHF based CPDLC?
We now talk about crossing the large waters where there are no ground stations for neither ADS-B signals nor VHF communications, whether by voice or data.
Figure 1. North Atlantic Tracks (NAT) going eastbound. Source: Nav Canada
The solutions over these Oceanic areas have to be based on the aircraft following predetermined tracks, Figure 1, and continuously issuing position reports to ground controllers that keep the aircraft separated along the tracks based on the reports. We now cover how this has been done historically and the way forward.
Bjorn’s Corner: When it gets tough, use PBN
By Bjorn Fehrm
1 July 2016, ©. Leeham Co: Over several Corners we have described how the introduction of ADS-B and GPS will revolutionize air navigation and the ease with which bad weather take-off and landing procedures can be defined, with minimal requirements for installations on the ground.
The GPS system enables accurate enough navigation systems if extra correction systems augment the GPS signal. They then enable ILS-like landing capabilities on virtually any airport without requiring special ground installations.
There are situations where the capabilities of augmented GPS systems are not good enough. When local terrain requires that approach or departure procedures to and from an airport be flown in a narrow corridor with curved paths, we need to step up to Performance Based Navigation.
Figure 1. Airports in difficult terrain require Performance Based Navigation. Source: Wikipedia
We will now go through what Performance Based Navigation is and how it differs from the GPS- based RNAV navigation we have described so far and when it will be used.
Bjorn’s Corner: Asia-Pacific Air Traffic Management
June 24 2016, ©. Leeham Co: Having covered the Air Traffic Management challenges in North America, Europe and Middle East we will now finish the series by looking at some specific problems affecting the Asia-Pacific region.
Asia-Pacific is the world region with the strongest growth in air traffic. IATA calculates that within 20 years half of the world’s air travel will originate or terminate within the region. Figure 1 shows that air traffic has several hot spots in Asia-Pacific, but also that there are areas with rather moderate traffic.
Figure 1. Air traffic’s main routes in the world. Asia-Pacific is an area with large differences in air traffic intensity. Source: Rockwell Collins
The region has its unique set of Air Traffic Management problems. We will now cover those that must be solved, should the region’s Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) be able to manage the forecasted growth in air travel in a safe way. Read more
Bjorn’s Corner: The Middle East Air Traffic Management
By Bjorn Fehrm
June 17 2016, ©. Leeham Co: Having covered the Air Traffic Management challenges that are present in the North American and European airspaces, we will now put the light on another air traffic hot spot, the Middle East.
Figure 1 show that air traffic is more intense over the US and Europe airspaces but that there are main crossroads to Asia and Africa that take their route over the Middle East, and the area has hot spots.
Figure 1. Air traffic’s main routes in the world. Middle East is an area with hot spots. Source: Rockwell Collins
As we have seen, the technical solutions are well on their way to enable the implementation of a modern and efficient Air Traffic Management. Both the US and European air space modernization is hinging on how well the human factors change process can be accomplished (in the US budgets are also a hindrance).
If we add political factors to the jam, we have a good description of the situation in the Middle East. Read more
Bjorn’s Corner: SES, Single European Sky
By Bjorn Fehrm
June 10, 2016, ©. Leeham Co: Last week I wrote about the practical implementation of the next generation Air Traffic Management (ATM) that is possible with the new technology based on ADS-B transponders. My examples were from the implementation of the US NextGen Air Traffic Management.
The US has the advantage that the airspace has one Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP), i.e. one organization for the Air Traffic Controllers. We will now look at the next generation Air Traffic Management in Europe where the project is called SES, Single European Sky. I wrote about SESAR, Single European Sky ATM Research, last week. This is the technology project for implementing ADS-B based ATM, SES is the European Union initiative involving all ANSPs in Europe in the change process.
Figure 1. Proposed division of airspace in Europe to implement SES/SESAR. Source: Eurocontrol
Presently Europe is divided into 37 ANSPs (the US airspace has one). The ANSPs operate within the national borders of the European states, each serving its own country. SES has proposed to change the present 37 Functional Airspace Blocks (FABs) to 9, Figure 1 Read more
Bjorn’s Corner: Transponders, the kingpin of safe air navigation, Part 3.
By Bjorn Fehrm
June 3, 2016, ©. Leeham Co: Over the past few weeks, we have described how transponders go from being little more capable than the WW2 IFF that they were developed from, to how they will act as information beacons, sending the aircraft’s ID, position and speed to all surrounding listeners every second.
The consequences of this change are nothing short of revolutionary. From a situation where the ground controller or adjacent aircraft had scarce information on the multitude of aircraft they tried to track, Figure 1, they can now receive all the information they need from the aircraft under observation.
Figure 1. NASA simulation of air traffic over US on a normal day. Source: NASA
This, together with other technologies like data link-based communication, will change Air Traffic Management as we know it.
Bjorn’s Corner: Transponders, the kingpin of safe air navigation, Part 2
By Bjorn Fehrm
May 27, 2016, ©. Leeham Co: In last week’s Corner, I started to describe how the aircraft Transponder grew out of the military IFF and how it gradually became a very important part of current Air Traffic Management (ATM).
We will now dwell deeper on the most capable transponder type, the mode S type. We will describe how this is available in versions which give Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) info on what the airliner is doing and how it’s further developed from an aid for air navigation to be the kingpin for all future air navigation.
Figure 1. A classical transponder for general aviation aircraft. Source: Garmin.
Figure 1 shows a classical transponder how most General Aviation and Commuter aircraft pilots know them, a narrow panel in the avionics stack. In airliners they are more integrated into the overall cockpit concept but their functionality is the same.
How the transponder developed to be the primary tool for safe air traffic is a bit involved, but we will take it in steps.
Bjorn’s Corner: Transponders, the kingpin of safe air navigation
By Bjorn Fehrm
May 19, 2016, ©. Leeham Co: In my recent Corners, I have been describing how a modern airliner navigates using a Flight Management System, (FMS or Computer, FMC) to navigate along the flight plan and how it finally uses an instrument landing system to safely land the aircraft even in bad weather.
When looking into instrument landing systems, we have described the legacy systems which require large ground installations (such as ILS) and how these can be replaced in the future with smarter concepts using GPS based procedures.
I will now continue on this path and describe some of the additional cornerstone technologies needed to implement a modernized Air Traffic Control (ATC) system, which can replace today’s systems that have their roots in World War 2 (WW2) technology.
We will start today with how aircraft can be seen from the ground or other aircraft without visual sight or Radar contact. Read more
Bjorn’s Corner: Landing after navigation, Part 2
By Bjorn Fehrm
13 May 2016, © Leeham Co: Last week we started to describe what is necessary to make a precision approach after a flight. We described the rather elaborate installations needed for the classical precision approach with an ILS system. It requires two transmitters and large antennae installations for each runway.
We will now describe the system which will replace ILS as worldwide instrument landing system, an augmented Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), where GPS is the variant provided by the US Department of Defence, Figure 1. Other GNSS are Russia’s GLONASS and Europe’s Galilleo.
Figure 1. The GPS system consists of up to 24 satellites which deliver position, velocity and time. Source: Wikipedia.
The problem with a non-augmented GPS is the precision. Classically the accuracy was worst case any where in the World around 100m horizontally and 150m vertically, but that was when the US military deliberately reduced the accuracy for civil use (Selective Availability). Today this deliberate reduction has stopped and the accuracy is 25m horizontally and 43m vertically worst case.
This is not enough for a precision approach. We will now describe what is done to bring the accuracy to a level where precision approaches can be flown with GPS. Read more