GPS World, July 2015

Policy and system news and developments GPS Galileo GLONASS BeiDou SYSTEM THE Photos by Tim Reynolds See EGNOS page 12 EGNOS Dream Now a Reality Tim Reynolds T oulouse France an aerospace city and the center of the French aerospace industry was the birthplace of EGNOS Europes satellite based augmentation system SBAS in 1994 So it was appropriate that the first ever EGNOS Flight Event was organized there in May by the European GNSS Agency GSA and the European Commission EGNOS is the acronym for European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service It is also SONGE the French word for dream spelled backwards and according to Jean Luc Moudenc mayor of Toulouse that is how the name originated The dream is now very much a reality Since its certification for civil aviation in 2011 EGNOS has made steady progress in implementation Today 111 airports in 15 countries across Europe benefit from EGNOS and many more are preparing for implementation 171 LPV localizer performance with vertical guidance and 86 BARO approaches are already certified for use The EGNOS Flight Event was EGNOS DEMO EQUIPMENT aboard a new Airbus A350 WXB below the first widebody airliner to be equipped with SBAS as a standard feature to all customers organized in collaboration with Airbus and brought together aviation media and other sector stakeholders for a briefing and demonstration of EGNOS how it works its benefits for aviation and a glimpse at its future EGNOS for Airbus Airbus sees EGNOS integration and SBAS generally into the avionics of their product offering from helicopters to the giant Beluga transport plane as the future A highlight of the event was a show and tell with the Airbus A350 WXB a real beauty of an airplane Participants were given a tour of this new state ofthe art wide bodied airliner including a simulation of an EGNOS enabled LPV landing in the cockpit Airbus test pilot Jean Christophe Lair described the A350 s new Satellite based Landing System SLS that works with SBAS such as EGNOS This is the first time such a system has been installed on a widebody airliner and will be supplied as a standard feature to all customers EGNOS is fully integrated into a common harmonized landing system the SLS on the A350 that allows the pilot to fly precision approaches like an ILS with geometrical vertical guidance down to 200 feet All the systems look the same to the pilot it is a seamless integration of EGNOS so no human factor issues said Lair Pilot feedback had been excellent with some 3000 hours flown on LPV approaches using both EGNOS in Europe and WAAS in North America We have experienced no technical or operational issues with SBAS operations he claimed The SLS shows value every day that it is used SLS LPV is operationally equivalent to CAT 1 ILS but brings significant additional assets above the LPV minimum such as the secure coding GPS World July 2015 www gpsworld com 10