AIN Blog: NextGen Capabilities Available Now

Without a doubt, the most startling advances in aviation continue to be in the realm of avionics: they are having a significant effect on flight operations and ultimately–witness the accelerating move to NextGen–on ATC. Some aircraft owners and operators view the upgrade mandates (such as ADS-B out) to meet NextGen’s equipage requirements as an unnecessary burden, but that shouldn’t be the way we characterize it, according to Ric Peri, vice president of government and industry affairs at the Aircraft Electronics Association.

ADS-B, he suggested, “is nothing more than modernization. The industry modernized aviation 25 years ago with the introduction of GPS, and the FAA is now modernizing its air traffic system to take advantage of it.” In other words, the ATC infrastructure is finally going to realize the benefits that GPS promised, from pinpoint radar-less surveillance to opening precision GPS approaches into many more airports. In fact, the number of Waas LPV approaches in the U.S. reached 3,951 at 1,746 airports in November, and 1,002 of these airports have no ILS. Precision GPS procedures are available in other regions, among them Canada and Europe.

Many aircraft being upgraded to ADS-B are taking advantage of the requirement for a precise GPS source to add LPV capability at the same time, so both the ATC system and the aircraft owner realize NextGen’s benefits.

Avionics Makers Ready for Change

With NextGen, there are other factors that dovetail nicely with avionics developments, for example performance-based navigation (PBN) required navigation performance (RNP) approaches. These often look like the designs of a twisted mind because of the way they curve around obstacles, but airlines have been flying them for years, and pilots of properly equipped business and light aircraft can also take advantage of this capability.

One company that saw this coming is Sandel Avionics. The company’s new Avilon integrated flight deck for King Airs displays path-based guidance in both the vertical and lateral axes on dedicated screens. The upgrade, priced at $175,000 installed, is a single preassembled unit that plugs into the airplane’s existing electrical connectors, greatly simplifying installation.

Honeywell is targeting future fliers with its DynaCharts software upgrade for Epic and Apex avionics suites. DynaCharts takes information from charts and uses it to populate cockpit displays, instead of placing the chart itself onto the display. This relieves the pilot of having to look at a chart then mentally cross-reference that information with what is showing on the displays.

To fly RNP approaches efficiently, autothrottles are essential, and avionics manufacturer Innovative Solutions & Support has developed a clutch-less and servo-less autothrottle system for Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 turboprops, a segment of the market that hasn’t seen this kind of technology. IS&S’s autothrottle can be adapted to any PT6-powered airplane, although it will also require installation of IS&S’s integrated standby display, which runs the thrust computer software to make the autothrottle work.

Avionics manufacturers are working hard to help pilots land in the worst weather, and efforts toward this goal include improvements to infrared sensor-based enhanced flight vision systems (EFVS). Honeywell is testing a combined vision system that marries infrared imagery with synthetic vision and presents it all on one primary flight display. And Rockwell Collins is bringing head-up displays (HUD) into smaller aircraft with its HGS-3500 compact HUD. The first installation is on Embraer’s Legacy 450/500. In addition to lower cost, the compact HUD also takes up much less space.

For aircraft where even a compact HUD might not fit, Thales has developed its TopMax head-mounted HUD, which consists of a monocular display that the pilot attaches a headset. Costing about half the amount of a traditional HUD, TopMax lets a pilot view flight information while looking through the display. Unlike with a more conventional display, the pilot can look in any direction and see pertinent information such as a terrain display when looking down, or traffic when looking to the side.

Infrared sensors are the current technology used for EFVS, but engineers are exploring other technologies that could help pilots “see” even better through low clouds during the final 100 feet before landing. Currently EFVS allows pilots to fly to 100 feet agl, but then they must be able to see the runway visually. Infrared sensors can’t cut through all types of thick fog. One possible solution envisions coded signals from LED approach lights received in the cockpit and translated into a visual display on the HUD or PFD. Someday soon, pilots might be able to hand-fly safely to touchdown in true zero-zero conditions.