Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Bjorn’s corner; Runway safety systems
By Bjorn Fehrm
August 11, 2016, ©. Leeham Co: I recently wrote about the need for Synthetic Vision and other aids to increase the situational awareness of commercial pilots. I asked the OEMs what their plans were for such aids.
One OEM answered that the system will take time until it gets offered as the additional training for the pilots to use the system is not popular with the airlines. It’s hard to monetize a concrete operational benefit for Synthetic Vision systems.
Figure 1. Embraer’s E190-E2 currently under flight test. Source: Embraer.
I have now got a slightly different answer from Embraer. Here is what they say. Read more
Bjorn’s Corner: Enhanced Vision
By Bjorn Fehrm
August 05, 2016, ©. Leeham Co: Last week we described Synthetic Vision and discussed why it hasn’t got its breakthrough yet. If we would have taken things chronologically, we should have started with Enhanced Vision systems.
Once again Gulfstream Business jets was the first to introduce Enhanced Vision Systems (EVS) into service. In 2001 it was certified as an option to the Gulfstream’s flight deck, using an infrared camera to generate a picture of what happens in front of the aircraft when visibility is bad, Figure 1.
Figure 1. Gulfstream Business Jet with Enhanced Vision IR camera. Source: Gulfstream.
Bjorn’s Corner: Synthetic Vision
By Bjorn Fehrm
29July 2016, ©. Leeham Co: In last week’s Corner we discussed the power of the eye versus other senses of the human body. If one provides the eye with a convincing visual scenario, it can override many other senses that tell the brain another story.
When flying in bad weather, there is nothing in the human body that helps us to say which is up or down. Gravity should do it, you say, with the inner ears balance organ and the bums pressure situation telling us if we are up or down. Not so sure! It is very easy to slowly enter a yawing downward spiral which produces a perfect 1G force straight downwards in the aircraft, telling our brain we are doing just fine.
Birds can’t fly in clouds for the same reason we can’t, at least not without aids. The standard aid is the artificial horizon, Figure 1.
Figure 1. An aircraft’s artificial horizon. Source: Sensorworks Android phone app
I choose the picture because it shows the problem with an artificial horizon well. Tell me what is happening in the picture? The orange bits in the middle is the aircraft. Is the horizon leaning to the right or the aircraft to the left?
One can gradually intellectually understand that a horizon does not lean so the aircraft is rolling left. But it is not a very intuitive tool to understand what is happening. Let’s now see what happens when we make the horizon more real. Read more
Bjorn’s Corner: Flight simulators
By Bjorn Fehrm
22 July 2016, ©. Leeham Co: Last week at the Farnborough Air Show I had the chance to try three flight simulators: The MC-21 airliner simulator, the SAAB Gripen fighter simulator and a special simulator for testing some new 3D synthetic vision ideas for a future avionics system. I’ve now tried some dozen different aircraft simulators of different generations, not counting the PC-based ones.
The simulators were different types. Some were fixed with displays that wrapped around and covered the peripheral vision like the Irkut MC-21 and SAAB Gripen ones. Others were full motion with complete surround vision display like the Airbus A350 simulator that I trained in ahead of flying A350 MSN002 last April, Figure 1. A third type were closed full motion simulators that lacked a vision system.
Figure 1. Airbus full motion A350 simulator in Toulouse. Source: LNC
Compared with the very advanced Airbus simulator, I was surprised how realistic it felt with the simpler fixed simulators I tried last week. It made me wonder why.
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