FLYSAFE under all conditions

A further application addresses the approach to an airport. Currently, the air traffic controller must give every aircraft directional and speed instructions, in order to ensure that they can join the approach traffic stream at a safe separation from each other. With the new system, just one instruction is given to each aircraft. This allows all of the aircraft to fall into line behind each other at the proper spacing, automatically . Another new capability is the onboard presentation of weather conditions (derived from weather radar) and the most recent weather forecasts from the ground. FLYSAFE combines these two data streams and presents them on the pilots screen in the cockpit. By combining meteorological information received from the ground with the data from onboard weather radar system, thunderstorms can be better identified. Moreover it allows to see beyond current weather radar capability. Furthermore, the weather reports from the ground also specify where Clear Air Turbulence areas are expected or where icing conditions could cause problems to the aircraft. To move forward with the resolution of collisions with terrain the current warning system has been enhanced. The collision prevention coverage has been extended to obstacles (e.g. buildings, radio towers,), the situation of the aircraft with respect to terrain and obstacles is presented to the crew now in both the horizontal plane and the vertical plane, the safety altitudes that pilots used to check on their paper charts is now integrated within the cockpit displays, and all flight plan changes are systematically checked for correctness with respect to terrain, obstacles and safety altitudes. This yields earlier alerts giving the pilots more time to take corrective actions. In addition to displaying information on the cockpit screens, a system has also been developed that finds alternate routes for pilots if they are confronted with conflicts, such as with other aircraft, bad weather conditions or terrain. In this period (February-April 2009) evaluation experiments are being carried out on the NLR simulators. The purpose of this experiment is to get feedback from experienced airline pilots, by letting them fly in realistic but simulated- operational circumstances. This feedback with other measurements will show some aspects of the maturity level of the new FLYSAFE features. The results of FLYSAFE will used for other projects by the European Union and European Commission, including CleanSky, a major joint technology project aimed at developing the greener aircraft of the future, and SESAR, the Single European Sky initiative for modernisation of Air Traffic Management. FLYSAFE results will be incorporated in the next generation of European aircraft.

During the two-day conference on March 25-26, the project innovations will also be demonstrated in the NLRs ATC and flight simulators. FLYSAFE aims at making flying even safer. The project therefore focused on reducing accidents caused by collisions with other aircraft or terrain and accidents caused by bad weather. The three-year project started in February 2005 and will end in June 2009. It involves 36 partners from 14 countries and has a budget of 53 million euro. During the conference FLYSAFEs innovations are demonstrated in the NLR's NARSIM air traffic control simulator and GRACE (a cockpit of an A320) flight simulator these two simulators are connected to each other. Air traffic controllers and pilots will demonstrate some of the new features developed during the FLYSAFE project. While taxiing, for example, pilots no longer receive the radio instructions from air traffic controllers, telling them which gate to taxi to and what route to take to get there. Instead, via a data link, the route appears on a map of the airport on the pilots cockpit screen. Thanks to this new tool developed during the FLYSAFE project, pilots no longer need to remember the taxiing routes they received from air traffic control, but rather this information is displayed in the cockpit. Moreover, the positions of other aircraft are shown as well, with alerts given when the pilots are too close to another airplane. In particular this alerting system warns pilots of possible collisions on the runway.