Kieran Daly/LONDON
THE USA IS TO present data to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) which, it says, demonstrate the feasibility of Category III satellite-navigation precision approaches.
US delegates to the key Communications/Operations Divisional meeting (COM-OPS 95), due to take place in Montreal between 27 March and 7 April, will re-affirm the nation's commitment to satellite-based Category I precision approaches but will not lay out a timetable for Category II/III operations.
At the meeting, the USA will press other nations to keep their current instrument-landing systems (ILS) for as long as possible.
US Federal Aviation Administration officials have visited the UK in an attempt to take the heat out of the debate over the use of the global-positioning system (GPS) for approaches.
The UK has led the European effort to ensure that the COM-OPS 95 meeting enshrines states' rights to use the microwave-landing system as the ILS becomes harder to protect from commercial-broadcasting interference.
Norman Solat, of the FAA's Brussels office, told a Royal Aeronautical Society conference in London on 2 March: "Our message at Montreal will be that we are confident, and it is in our plans, that we will run Category 1 precision approaches in the USA with the global navigation-satellite system [GNSS] or augmented GNSS with the wide-area augmentation system and, where required, with local-area augmentation."
Solat's second message is that the FAA "...will bring the data which will demonstrate the feasibility of Cat II and III operations". He claims that hands-off automatic landings with augmented GPS are now "...possible with any of three technologies that we are looking at".
Solat stresses, however, that the USA will present data only on the GPS' claimed Cat III accuracy and not on other crucial issues, including integrity and continuity.
He continues: "It doesn't mean that we have a plan on the books as to when we will have offered Cat II/III. There is a long list of things that need to happen before we can have Cat II/III."
Emphasising the vital importance to the USA of protecting the ILS, Solat says: "It is another tenet that we can maintain Cat II and III ILS for the foreseeable future. Another thing that we would like to see come out of COM-OPS is that the protection today for ILS to be maintained for as long as we can do it. We recognise that there are some places where that might not be feasible, and this [London] might be one of them, but, in most places, it can be done." o
Source: Flight International
