Qantas Publicly Announces Its Use of GPS for Landing Guidance

Qantas has publicly announced its use of GLS (GPS landing system) that it helped develop along with Boeing, Honeywell and AirServices Australia.  Qantas undertook much of the system's proving and testing.

Qantas has been active in the evaluation of GLS in Australia for a number of months.

Captain Chris Manning, Qantas' chief pilot, said GLS is now available on a large number of the airline's fleet of B-737-800s, and the airline's new B-787 and A380 will come equipped with this capability.

GLS uses GBAS (ground-based augmentation systems) located at airports, which improves the accuracy and integrity of GPS information by uplinking additional data to the aircraft. This can "allow for a tracking accuracy typically less than one meter," Captain Manning said. "One GBAS provides for up to 90 approaches within a 23 nautical mile radius, unlike conventional instrument landing systems which require an installation for every runway - for example, the three runways at Sydney Airport require two instrument landing systems for each runway, he added."

Other advantages of GLS over ILS, according to Captain Manning, are its ability to be used to create curved approach paths, and to provide accurate approaches to runways that are unable to accommodate conventional ILS for siting, infrastructure or economic reasons.  05-05-2007.

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