Kieran Daly/PARIS

LOCKHEED MARTIN IS close to securing the airline partners it needs to run trials leading to certification of its pioneering Autonomous Precision Approach and Landing System (APALS)

The company has already signed a memorandum of understanding with an unidentified US regional operator to co-operate with Category II certification.

Business development manager Otto Dieffenbach says that Lockheed Martin is also negotiating with two major European carriers to work on Cat IIIa automatic-landing approval. Certification flights with those airlines are due to start in late 1996, with the intention of gaining European Joint Aviation Authorities certification in mid-1997.

Lockheed Martin declines to identify the carriers, but says that they are in different countries operating narrow-body types to under-developed countries - hence their desire for autonomous landing capability.

Additionally, the company is to perform demonstrations for the US Air Force's Air Mobility Command in December.

Dieffenbach says that the company is also negotiating with the Chinese Government over the possible use of the APALS in its military-transport fleet.

The APALS uses a unique radar-image scene-matching process to navigate in three dimensions down to 100ft (30m), with inertial guidance to final touchdown. It requires no surface navigation-aids and provides data similar to the instrument landing system, for head-up or head-down displays or to an auto-pilot.

Dieffenbach says that three pre-production units will be delivered in mid-August for first flight in a Raytheon Aircraft owned Beech 1900 in October. Spectrum Engineering of Vancouver is producing the components for assembly by Lockheed Martin.

The aircraft will be used in a 50-landing "reliability demonstration" in November, followed by a series of public, customer and regulatory-authority demonstration flights.

Those trials will add five runways to the APALS approach database containing the radar images at the core of the system. The new approaches are at Houston Hobby, Texas; Galveston, Texas; Richmond, Virginia; Andrews AFB; Maryland; and the US Federal Aviation Administration Technical Center at Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Source: Flight International