ACSS hopes to sign up the first business aircraft manufacturer for its Surface Area Movement Management (SAMM) situational-awareness system by year-end. SAMM alerts crews to potential conflicts by tracking ground and airborne traffic in the terminal area using on-board surveillance systems and is part of ACSS’s SafeRoute suite of automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast (ADS-B) software solutions.
SAMM, along with a merging and spacing function, has been selected by package carrier UPS for a fleet-wide upgrade programme. ACSS president Kris Ganase says business aircraft manufacturers are showing increasing interest in the situational awareness benefits of SAMM, which he says represents a “giant leap over the competing [runway awareness] system, because it gives advisories”.
The SAMM module uses ADS-B, the traffic information service - broadcast and an electronic flight bag to display airport runways and taxiways, as well as the positions of traffic on and around the airport.
The L-3/Thales company, meanwhile, expects to complete the paperwork for certification of its TCAS 3000 third-generation traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) by year-end.
The system, due to enter service first on Dassault’s Falcon 7X, marks the inauguration of ACSS’s common computing platform (CCP), which hosts the TCAS 3000 software.
“If the CCP is like a personal computer, then TCAS is like loading in Word and SafeRoute would be like Excel,” says Ganase. “It’s been a three-year development programme for us and the first application is the TCAS 3000.” Final certification of the new TCAS is expected in the first quarter of 2006.
Other functions that can be added to the platform include modules for terrain awareness, Mode S and ADS-B.
Source: Flight International
