This story got coverage on UK BBC TV News this morning, featuring the CEO of Easyjet. However, Easyjet itself evidently considers this more
PR than 'news' - there's absolutely nothing about it on the EJ website 'news' page!
He described an 'infra-red camera' to be fitted to aircraft which would give visualisation of 'tiny' amounts of VA up to '100s' of miles away. Easyjet to spend '£1m' fitting out 'a dozen' aircraft. He also said that the system fitted to '100s' of aircraft would give real-time data about location of VA.
OK so far.
But this cannot be new technology so why nothing much about this concept before?
Fitting 100s of systems and providing real-time data collection (via existing aircraft telemetry? another data channel? you tell me!) would cost a LOT more than £1m!!!
He was asked whether this was 'new technology' but only said it was 'exciting'. Later, he also said that IR had advanced a lot in recent years. But it does sound like nothing much really new is involved. So I'm a little sceptical, along with other posts already here, about what technical gain
existing IR can give.
And as posts in the VA main thread have already pointed out, even if you get real-time warning of VA (say) 20 miles ahead, 'what you gonna do about it'?! NATS et al might get a teeny bit tetchy and flustered if aircraft all over the sky suddenly started requesting ad hoc route / height changes.
