MICHAEL PHELAN / LONDON
Predictive flight guidance technology offers to boost safety as well as expanding capacity at busy airports
Boeing and NASA are testing a "virtual flightpath" navigation system that promises to boost safety and expand capacity at congested airports. The system is installed on a US Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter which is being test flown at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.
The perspective flight guidance (PFG) enhanced graphical system shows an aerial pathway on the pilot's primary flight display, plotting the next 60s of the aircraft's flightpath based on flightplan inputs, and supplies bank and turn cues that the pilot can easily follow. The software can also anticipate where the aircraft will be in 4.5s based on the pilot's control inputs, and will alert the pilot if the inputs will result in an "off-pathway" trajectory.
A series of tests this month will attempt to validate the system's in-flight performance against ground-based simulations.
The PFG system was originally developed for steep-angle approaches and departures of short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft.
William Hindson, the project's principal investigator at Ames, says: "Development of new cockpit displays like the PFG may enable pilots to precisely and safely fly in and out of airports without affecting primary traffic flow or increasing noise to the surrounding community."
The display also has military applications, such as during large-scale deployments requiring safe operation of a high-density mix of aircraft at night and in poor weather conditions.
Source: Flight International
