Flight demonstration of 3D perspective synthetic vision and ADS-B for closely spaced parallel approaches

Abstract

Airports lose significant capacity during instrument conditions. Several plans are afoot to expand the nations' airports to achieve sufficient runway spacing for independent IFR approaches. The projected cost of the ten largest projects in the US is $8-16 billion. The ability to conduct closely spaced parallel approaches (CSPA) in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) could reduce the requisite runway separation and significantly lower that national expense. In addition, the environmental impact of airport capacity increases would be significantly reduced. This paper presents a synthetic vision display and the supporting flight system to attempt to achieve this goal. The display presents the pilot with the information necessary to aviate, navigate and monitor traffic on the parallel approach. This paper also documents the first series of flight experiments to test the applicability of synthetic vision displays to CSPA operations.