One of the greatest threats to the safety of the air transport network today is incursion by ‘unpredictable’ or ‘unknown’ elements into the path of commercial air traffic, as highlighted in the UK CAA Safety Plan for 2011-2013 and the US NTSB’s ‘most wanted’ list of safety priorities. However, the recent explosion in the tablet computing and smartphone market could provide a platform for 'disruptive technologies’ that would reduce the likelihood of such events.

With commercial air traffic movements expected to double by the year 2030, a great deal of money is being invested to ensure the air transport system can meet future capacity demands – in Europe this is partly being driven through the work of the SESAR Joint Undertaking. However, to a large extent these projects have not addressed the challenge of General Aviation. This category of airspace user will need to equip with new systems to ensure system-wide safety levels are maintained, international standards are met and the community itself retains its airspace accessibility ‘footprint’. The UK alone has a community of 8,000 general aviation aircraft, the majority of which are not equipped with air-ground communication datalinks and whose infringements on controlled airspace are a safety priority for both NATS and the CAA. But the growth in mobile computing could provide a solution.

Tablets and smartphones provide a platform from which ‘disruptive technologies’ can be leveraged to enable the safe management of low predictability air traffic (e.g. General Aviation and, potentially, future light UAS). Specifically they promise to enable the introduction and equipage of light aircraft with lightweight, portable, low cost and certified avionic systems. These would provide:

• greater situational awareness for the pilot in the cockpit (by providing alerting on airspace/runway incursions, proximity of local air traffic, local weather information, etc., all of which is updated in real time). As part of this ‘package’ of functionality there is a specific opportunity to provide low-cost certified avionics capable of supporting a low visibility approach to land using safety-of-life GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals which have recently become available to the aviation market (read our recent blog on this topic)
• a more complete and predictable airspace picture for controllers on the ground, particularly for small and light general aviation aircraft (e.g. gliders and rotorcraft).

Developments in this area will first hinge on proving the feasibility of profitably producing an avionics ‘box’ that meets the requirements of many different users in terms of functionality, and at relatively low cost.

Any prototype built to such a diverse specification will still need to function alongside sophisticated 4D trajectory management systems and as such will need to be highly interoperable. The platform will also need to be sufficiently flexible to enable ongoing performance improvements through software upgrade roll-outs.

This area of work presents an exciting opportunity to bring trajectory management predictability to airspace users without an FMS in the aircraft, which should result in safety benefits. The question is, who will be the first to develop (and patent) such a system?

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