The European Business Aviation Safety Workshop at EBACE yesterday examined whether better flightdeck design can help eliminate the accident categories that result in the highest number of fatalities. The current killers are loss of control (LOC), controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), and runway accidents.
Dassault Aviation's chief Falcon test pilot Philippe Deleume told about 60 delegates at the seminar that Dassault, along with other manufacturers, is trying to eliminate the failures of situational awareness that lead to LOC and CFIT by improving flight instrument displays and alerting systems.
The latest generation of avionics, like Dassault's EASy suite, have screens that impose the primary flight instrument readings on a synthetic terrain display and the navigation display also has a terrain backdrop. Deleume is also in favour of replicating this in head-up displays for both pilots.
Apart from visual enhancements, aural alerts to the pilots warn if the speed is getting too high or low, reducing LOC risk. Augmented satellite navigation systems provide such fine navigation accuracy it reduces the risk of CFIT, and improves the stability of approaches, reducing approach and landing accident risk. Finally, a satnav-linked system can voice the runway identification on final approach, limiting the potential for runway misidentification.
Just as safety has improved with each generation of aircraft, said Deleume, it will improve again with the latest generation of avionic systems combined with precision satnav.
Source: Flight Daily News
