Andrew Doyle/SAO JOSE DOS CAMPOS
Crossair aims to become the first regional airline to have aircraft compliant with Europe's future communications, navigation and surveillance/air traffic management (CNS/ATM) operating environment when it begins taking delivery of a fleet of 15 Embraer ERJ-145s in February.
The carrier says it decided to equip the aircraft with a state-of-the-art avionics suite to meet the requirements of Eurocontrol's ATM-2000+ concept, although it is not due to be implemented until at least 2005. The additional equipment costs about $1 million per aircraft.
According to Crossair's head of flight operations support, Dominik Waser, the airline chose to work with Honeywell to upgrade the ERJ-145's flightdeck so that most of the changes could be certificated before delivery.
"Otherwise, from the end of 2001 we would have to get huge modifications done," he says.
The changes will allow Crossair to reap immediate benefits, such as the ability to carry out Category 1 precision approaches to non-instrument landing system-equipped runways in Switzerland.
The Basle-based carrier's ERJ-145s will be fitted with dual Honeywell SPZ-2000 flight management and inertial reference systems, traffic alert/collision avoidance system 2000, digital ACARS, VHF datalink and a Sextant solid-state standby instrument display.
"Embraer is now offering airlines this so-called 'European package' configuration as a standard upgrade," says Waser. "ATM-2000+ is being used as the baseline for the concept."
ATM-2000+ is aimed at increasing air traffic capacity over Europe by enabling pilots to navigate their aircraft more accurately, allowing vertical and horizontal separations to be reduced safely, and facilitating data communications with air traffic controllers. The ATM-2000+ gate-to-gate strategy is due to be adopted at a European ministerial level in January.
Crossair is keen to back moves to modernise European ATM because it has suffered badly from air traffic control (ATC)-related delays. The regional has long-complained about Europe's worsening delay situation and has called for ATC privatisation to resolve the problem.
Source: Flight International
