All-PRNAV airports

[M609]

The Saabs(2000 as well as 340) all have full FMS. PRNAV too. The Q400, ATR, Dornier 328 have all full FMS as well.

Aircraft CAN have it yes, but far from all of them do. All ATRs and Saabs we handle on a daily basis are BRNAV only. We even have some A320 series pitching up without PRNAV, but they are often chartered stuff flying for weird airlines no one has heard of.

peter: As far as the "fly the overlay" is the easy way for ATC to guide you into the terminal area, as it saves them a lot (potentially) of verctoring. They still have to consider you "wandering off".

The way we shift BRNAV aircraft is to route them via the TMA STAR entry fix, and DCT another fix further into the TMA, then vectors from there. The feeder sectors will give that as standard, and it is in our LoA. Still means I have to consider them deviating from that track, and they do, whatever you might think.

As far as it being reckless designing procedures close together in PRNAV, even when we see some deviations: The point is that deviations from PRNAV A/C are very rare, and some freak deviations we have to expect, and react to tactically. The procedures are designed for the best strategic result.

As for Point Merge System, what do you want to know? It works well in many traffic situations, escpecially in high traffic load.
And I have first hand experience, as one of around 25 controllers in the world that use it with live traffic

Yes, it has drawbacks, and our procedures need some tweaking, because there are some things you can only find working real airplanes. Simulators cannot replicate everything, and thatīs the price for being "launch customer".

Point Merge is not for every airport, or every set of airspace.

[MIKECR]

If they dont already have it M609, then most I believe will do. Our FMS's are all upgraded and ready.

[mad_jock]

Fair enough and doing a search it appears that the GNS/XLS is counted as a FMS these days and is also PRNAV (with a software upgrade). I have a reasonable bit of time on them.

I always took FMS to be able to do VNAV and link into the vertical modes of your AP.

Well you live and learn. Any box of tricks that can do LNAV and drive your flight director is now a FMS.

[silverknapper]

Very surprised if Saab 340 operations are PRnav approved.

[peterh337]

Still means I have to consider them deviating from that track, and they do, whatever you might think.

But surely any aircraft can deviate from that track - whether it is a brand new 737, the Apollo 11 lunar module (which had two INSs), or my TB20

Any box of tricks that can do LNAV and drive your flight director is now a FMS.

Well, yes.

What is an FMS? It is the principal user interface for the navigation sources, with other goodies like fuel metering, loading, and whatever other stuff I know nothing about. Apart from the goodies it is not significantly different from a high-end GA GPS from a decade ago (not Garmin though).

But we are getting nowhere, chaps.

All that M609 is basically saying, if I understand him correctly, is that equipment in the old Tupolevs has improved.

You still do not need PRNAV to autofly a programmed lateral track Shall I paste my last post at this point, again?

[mad_jock]

Silvernapper during my searches there are a whole heap of software upgrades for old ****e bits of kit to be PRNav approved. But there is a crew training overhead as well even if the kit is good to go.

And M609 I wouldn't be suprised if your aircraft are PRnav approved now but some gimp in OPS hasn't bothered there arse changing the RPL's or they are waiting for the training cycle to include all the crew going through the sim.

And Peter a FMS to me is whole different ball game to whats being discussed which as you say is just a box of tricks which is like a GPS on steriods. Takes nav data and creates a magenta line. Depending on the box it may join striaght lines or it might give you curves as well and do the holds for you.

FMS will do your trim
All your performance calcs including speeds
Fuel burn. predicted burn and take care of landings weights etc.
Taking the wind levels into consideration will plan your decent to the runway including any speed/level restrictions.
It will drive the vnav to get the previously calculated profile.
It will manage the plane in flight to achive a cost index.
It will work out your most economic cruise level etc

I am sure you get my drift.

Oh and Peter during my searches there is something about PRNav point names being 32bit something or other and your box of tricks needs to be compliant other wise it misses them and can send you off to another airfield halfway through the procedure. ( I really don't have a clue, this is by far your special subject)

[GWYN]

M609, what I 'want to know' is, have these new procedures released a lot of latent capacity in the airspace or improved safety? Are you now able to handle a lot more movements per hour with fewer controllers? I admit, I don't really understand what point merge is, which is why I ask the questions. Does it really achieve anything that a good Flow Controller would not, in terms of sequencing traffic?

Yes, these are all nifty new procedures, but I (and I believe Peter) have not yet seen any evidence that they lead to any real enhancements in traffic flows, safety, or (sorry!) Flight Efficiency.

I try to keep an open mind on all these things, but that also means that I am not necessarily convinced that something is an improvement just because it is new - or because it is mandated by Brussels.

[mad_jock]

EUROCONTROL - Point Merge for Oslo, Dublin and Rome?

And from oslo

Point Merge System - new regulations for air traffic at Oslo Airport Gardermoen - YouTube

Basically you wang it round an arc until you get to your radial and then head towards a center fix until you get Loc established.

[GWYN]

Oh, and mad jock referring in a derogatory manner to "some gimp in OPS" does display a rather poor attitude to those who are probably your colleagues or customers. Hardly likely to endear you or make for a good working environment wherever you may work. In my experience there are individuals who might fit that title in all walks of life, and that includes on flight decks, sitting in front of radar screens and many others.

Indeed if you read my previous posts you may realise that far from being the omission of 'some gimp in Ops' (RPLs??), it may even be 'company policy' to not admit to being PRNAV.

[GWYN]

......and thanks for posting the Avinor video. I'll have to look at that tomorrow!

[Denti]

All your performance calcs including speeds

If you mean take off and landing performance calculation, that is something most airliners still need an EFB for (or paper if they're still stuck in the last century).

[peterh337]

Yeah, I am still searching for the reason why PRNAV is "needed" for its lateral accuracy. For example, these four track fragments, which I captured with my ancient kit



are all within 0.5nm of the track, except the last where the overshoot (I did that one with turn anticipation disabled in the GPS) is 1nm i.e. within PRNAV limits.

This is a more typical arrival sector performance



Yet, for me to get PRNAV approval I would have to rip out all this perfectly working kit and put in other kit which won't deliver anything different to the controller.

It should be readily apparent that PRNAV is something devised back in the great days when a Tupolev from the Peoples Republic of Upper Volta could land with 1 engine out at LHR and depart as it came

But where there is money, there is a gravy train running on it, and there is no shortage of people trying to jump on it. The avionics installers love this. How much does it cost to upgrade some regional turboprop to this "capability"?

And there is a lot of certification work involved in this, which keeps the nice people at EASA at work. What goes around comes around

[Denti]

All your performance calcs including speeds

If you mean take off and landing performance calculation, that is something most airliners still need an EFB for (or paper if they're still stuck in the last century).

[mad_jock]

That could be a fair comment when working for BA netjets or any major.

The rest of us have to put up with no hotel rooms booked, no hire car, no flight plans, bizarre flight planning, impossible scheduals and then when you phone they have legged it as soon as they get an arrival message. And our crews lives constantly screwed about because of thier piss poor planning and attention to detail.

Gimps in ops can run an airline into the ground far faster than any other deptment.

And BTW I have worked as ops I know exactly what it takes and what a bastard of a job it is. I am not expecting anything other than what I would provide myself.

But as you say if by not being PRnav approved gets them out of doing the point merge system it may very well be a tatical omission that they can do it.

Certainly most aircraft seem to have an upgrade to allow you to do it. How much that upgrade is (I should imagine alot) I don't know. Although thankfully the trusty trimble approach plus doesn't :-)

Peter from my searches tonight it appears that most of the kit can do it already with a software upgrade. I think you can also do it with twin G530's but I don't have a reference for that. It was an option for the 8.33 capability which also got you PRNav as well.

Fair enough denti I got a jump seat on 777 years ago am pretty certain they pulled them out and then cross referenced them against the paper books. But it was a few years and before I had any clue what was going on in a CAT cockpit.

[M609]

have these new procedures released a lot of latent capacity in the airspace or improved safety

Safety: Yes, when the system is operating at max capacity I belive safety is much improved. The reasoning for that has several focuses, but the main one for me is that R/T loadinng on all sectors are greatly reduced. (When using the PMS fully, aircraft get few instructions, because all the vectoring is gone, and because vi can count on a/c performing the turns published inside the merge points, there is less need for step decends for safety.)

Our setup is one Director (DIR) managing the PMS arcs, and one Final (FIN) doing speed control and vectors of BRNAV aircraft once turn and decend from the arc is done.

The R/T call sequenc can be as minimal as:

1.Checkin DIR
2.Reply
3.Turn instruction from ARC
4.Readback
5.Descend instruction and freq. change to FIN
6.Readback
7.Checkin FIN
8. ILS clearence via transition or DCT fix
9.Readback
10. Speedreduction to 180kts
11.Readback
12. Speed reduction to 160kts and freq change to TWR
13. Readback

We estimate that is a reduction of approx 40% from the old vectoring system, which means the controller has more spare capacity.

As for the departures/arrival conflicts, done at the two TMA sectors (east/west), the R/T loading is down as well for the IFR traffic, due to the designs outlined in the video there are less level offs of departures. This is not all down to RNAV and PMS, but some. SIDs can accuratly be turned of the "inside" of arrival routes, closer to the airport, and contineous climb departures are the norm.

I estimate 95% of all jet departures get cont. climb to cruise. (Segregated arrival and departure routes in the AOR was allso part of the redesign)

Staffing:
For the TMA we run one more sector with the same number of people, that says something about the workload. Before the redesign it was very close to becoming unsafe when we operated at max capacity, because of high R/T load and "everthing" on radar vectors. Today we can run more traffic, with no drama at all, and I donīt see the need for adding sectors for some time.

I stated earlier that PMS are not for all airports, and this is where it becomes interesting. Oslo got a PMS system that is a bit to large, and it will be downsized in the 2.0 version. (We often have to shortcut befor traffic reach the system, and to long level flight segments are not popular with the customer. That will be improved, see my "launch customer remark")

One problem when using PMS in the terminal enviroment is that if you make the arcs too big, and/or place them too far from the RWY like we have to a certain degree, you donīt get to save on staffing as much as possible.

For Oslo we had planned to run DIR and FIN bandboxed for more of the time than we do, but has found that the number of trackmiles from entry onto DIR freq to THR can bring to many a/c onto one freq.
But: Since the Arr/dep conflicts are less, we can now bandbox the 2 TMA sectors much more. We could NEVER bandbox them before.

As for PMS on a European level, the use as enroute sequencing tool is interestring, and it is a really good way to merge 2-3 flows of tfc into 1.
The French are going that route I belive.

There are however some factors that you need to get the most out of PMS, at least in the terminal airspace, and the main one is a working automatic arrival manager (AMAN). PMS is great for absorbing short delays, ut på ca 4-5 pr aircraft. It is just as useless as radar vectors if the TMA gets overloaded with aircraft.

http://www.barco.com/barcoview/downl...SYRIS_AMAN.pdf

I know NATS had some issues with their AMAN, but we are fairly happy with ours. They use it a little different to us, but then again it was designed for our kind of use. (We have the same system from Barco, NATS bought our HMI after us, and went live BEFORE we did, that might be some of the problem as well.....)



One the subject of aircraft types that could/should be PRNAV equipped. We used to have less BRNAV customers. The company that flew mail for the national mail service, West Air Sweden had PRNAV for most of their ATPs and all the CRJs. Then they decided to shaft their staff, so they created a new company based in Luxembourg, called West Air Luxembourg, bid on the same mail contract based on lower salaries for the pilots. They won.

Now NONE of the ATPs are PRNAV. And yes, itīs the same airframes! Progress?

[GWYN]

Thanks for the detailed explanation, M609.

I have to defer to your knowledge and experience on the point merge and as someone who is actually operating the system, I have to accept your vote of confidence in it. I still don't really fully understand though why, a) PRNAV is required for this and b) why the 'amount of controlling' is less. I don't see why conventional STARs cannot be flown without a lot of vectoring. After all the STARs are designed for that reason are they not, in order that the aircraft can be assigned a STAR and left to fly it, including any level changes? Surely that can also be flown in most cases as a CDA?

Anyway, good luck with the new procedures. I hope with the fine tuning it does release capacity, but also you, but more importantly, Eurocontrol have to accept that PRNAV is a huge financial burden to impose on airlines at an inappropriate time. APD (in the UK), European carbon taxes etc, all add to the price of a ticket and this is in danger of making flying something which is out of reach for many people.

[peterh337]

It is IME (GA only) unusual to fly a STAR using own VNAV. Even if one is flying a named STAR whole, the vertical part is according to ATC direction. Most STARs do not have clear vertical levels assigned to the different bits.

And I cannot see why PRNAV is necessary for this. All one needs is the ability to fly a programmed track on autopilot.

Maybe PRNAV has been used as a stick to beat the "old hardware" airlines into upgrading their avionics, on the pretext that the improved lateral accuracy is necessary?

[LYMANGOOD]

Very surprised if Saab 340 operations are PRnav approved.

The Saabs with UNS1k/1L (Incl. K+/L+ models) installations are P-RNAV approved since 2008 if you have the supplement 37 from Saab

[M-ONGO]

All well and good as long as you have an approved manual for P-RNAV.