Dassault announced at the show that its flagship Falcon 8X will soon receive “operational credit” allowing bad weather approaches down to 100ft (30m) minimum decision heights on aircraft equipped with its FalconEye combined vision system.
The new capability recently completed a joint US and European certification campaign, and will be introduced on to the market before the end of the year, says Dassault. It will be available for Falcon 2000S/LXS and 900LX customers in the first half of 2019.
The upgrade will permit pilots to make a precision approach at airfields without ground-based navigation aids, down to a decision height of 100ft, greatly expanding the number of airports the aircraft can serve in bad weather conditions.
“With FalconEye we’ve not only developed an industry-leading technology, but provided a huge safety benefit to our operators,” says Eric Trappier, chairman and chief executive of Dassault Aviation. “With this coming certification, our customers will have even greater flexibility and access while at the same time benefiting from the enhanced situational awareness of the world’s most advanced combined vision system.”
Dassault describes the FalconEye as "the first head-up display to blend synthetic, database-driven terrain mapping and actual thermal and low-light camera images into a single view". The systems has been available since early 2017, providing what the French airframer calls an “unprecedented level” of situational awareness to flight crews in all conditions of operation, day and night. The vast majority of Falcon 8X operators have opted to install the FalconEye head-up display, says Dassault.
The company will not disclose how many of the ultra-long-range trijets have been delivered since the first example entered service in October 2016, but Flight Fleets Analyzer records a fleet of 34 units.
Source: Flight Daily News
