Qantas and SAS Will Test AVTECH's System to Improve CDAs

SAS and Qantas have agree to test AVTECH's system to improve CDAs (continuous descent approaches) by providing more accurate wind information to an aircraft's FMS (flight management system).  SAS will use the system at Stockholm's Arlanda, and Qantas at Brisbane.

The agreements cover implementation and testing of the AVTECH's Aventus NowCast System, which compiles wind and temperature information and uplinks pertinent data to the approaching aircraft.  The objective is to put NowCast into daily operation, if it works as expected.

Serdar Akalinli, who developed the NowCast system for AVTECH, said, "Our simulations have shown that it isn't possible to state that it will be an efficient approach unless the pilots and the FMS are provided with the correct winds. If the wind information is of poor quality or not available there will be a risk of having to add thrust in case of an actual headwind or a risk of being 'high and hot' in case of an actual tailwind. Even if the pilots already enter winds into the FMS, we are convinced [the system] will refine the descent profile even further since we are selecting the wind levels dynamically and individually for each flight."

Anders Palm, AVTECH's CEO elaborated further by saying, "The number of winds that can be uplinked is limited so it requires some logic in the tool making it valuable for the specific aircraft. Our method of doing the logic is currently under observation by the patent institute."

NowCast is one of a suite of products, AVTECH calls, TRANSCAP, which can be used by airlines and airports to evaluate efficiency and traffic effects. The other tools are:

• The Operational Efficiency Analyzer that can compare individual approaches to an "optimal" criteria of efficiency, operational effectiveness, noise control, emissions and track miles flown.

• The Runway Capacity Analyzer that can determine a runway's throughput based on a given distribution of RTA (required time of arrival) accuracy. It can also be used to optimize runway layouts and taxi configurations.

The Environmental Load Analyzer has been used for a number of airports and approaches to determine the noise savings that can be made by flying different types of approaches.  03-17-2008.

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