RISE Continues to Prove the Benefits of PBN

The SESAR JU RISE project carried out the latest in successful demonstration flights as TAP Portugal, in partnership with NAV Portugal and Airbus ProSky, conducted flight trials at Madeira.

The RISE Project, which seeks to improve airport accessibility, enhance safety and reduce environmental impact at airports throughout Europe, is co-financed by SESAR Joint Undertaking and its partners. In Madeira specifically, these procedures will enhance safety by providing fully managed and repeatable procedures and improve airport accessibility by lowering approach minima and thus reducing weather related diversions. 

To enhance safety, improve flight efficiency and airport accessibility, Airbus ProSky, part of “Services by Airbus,” and its partners launched the RISE project (Required Navigation Performance Implementation Synchronised in Europe) throughout southern Europe in autumn 2015. 

Antonio Aguiar, TAP Portugal Flight Operations - Technical Support Director, and RISE coordinator within TAP Portugal, remarked: “So far we’ve performed more than 40 flight trials at Madeira. We are very pleased with the outcome of these trials since the procedures are easy to fly, leading consistently to zero deviation from the intended track, clearly improving overall efficiency.” 

In advance of the demonstration flight, Airbus ProSky, in partnership with NAV Portugal, intensively trained the Air Traffic Controllers on the PBN procedures and following the flights have captured controller feedback. 

Thomas Lagaillarde, Airbus ProSky General Manager added, “We are pleased to hear the feedback on the procedures at Madeira.  It represents how this project will allow more efficiency of flight operations.” 

NAV Portugal published the procedures in the AIP last summer in anticipation of the trials. They are available on the NAV Portugal website to be accessible to the national and foreign aircraft operators who wish to apply for operational approval from the National Aviation Authority. 

The Madeira flight trials are a portion of the more than 160 flight trials will be conducted in collaboration with the partner airlines and ANSPs through September 2016 in France, Greece, Cyprus and Portugal. These trials will capture feedback from flight crew and air traffic controllers on the procedures in terms of fly-ability, safety, crew and ATC workload, as well as assess savings in CO² emissions and fuel consumption reduction. 

ABOUT RISE
Lead and co-financed by SJU, the project is managed by Airbus ProSky, in collaboration with four air navigation service providers (ANSPs) – DCAC, NAV Portugal, DSNA, HCAA – and three airline operators -Air France, Novair and TAP Portugal. Together, these partners will conduct over 160 flight trials, demonstrating a range of PBN procedures, such as Required Navigation Performance (RNP) Approach, RNP AR, Visual RNAV, and RNP to Instrument Landing System (ILS) procedures, in France (Nice and Ajaccio); Portugal (Madeira and Horta), Greece (Corfu, Iraklion, Santorini, Mykonos) and Cyprus (Paphos, Larnaca) 

About SESAR (Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research) was set up to modernise and harmonise ATM systems through the definition, development and deployment of innovative technological and operational solutions. Established in 2007, the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU) is a public-private partnership which pools the knowledge and resources of the entire ATM community in order to define, research, develop and validate SESAR Solutions. Founded by the European Union and Eurocontrol, the SJU currently has 15 members who together with their partners and affiliate associations represent over 80 companies working in Europe and beyond. The SJU also works closely with staff associations, regulators, airport operators, and the scientific community. In 2014, the SESAR Deployment Manager (SDM), comprised of air navigation service providers, airlines and the SESAR-related Deployment Airport Operators Group (SDAG), coordinates the implementation of the EU’s Pilot Common Project, the first set of SESAR Solutions to be deployed in a synchronised and timely manner across Europe.