The flight trials planned within the European project GRADE - GNSS
Solutions for Increased GA and Rotorcraft Airport Accessibility Demonstration
took place at the Capua airport “Oreste Salomone” from 14th
until 24th of
October 2019. The aim of the GRADE project is to demonstrate the capability
of General Aviation aircraft and Rotorcraft to exploit the concepts developed
within SESAR, in order to facilitate the integration of such aircraft in
airspace and airports. In particular, the GRADE project aims to demonstrate
through flight trials the applicability to General Aviation of the SESAR
solutions for instrumental approach and landing until CAT-II, performed by
using curved legs and continuous descent procedures and exploiting the GNSS
technologies (EGNOS and GBAS). The trials carried out in Capua followed two
previous flight campaigns performed at the Braunschweig airport in Germany
and allowed achieving all the project objectives. The flight campaign was
conducted by CIRA using the experimental FLARE aircraft and involved one test
pilot, four air traffic controllers and a supervisor (provided by the project
partners BULATSA and MATS). During the flights, two prototype navigation
equipment were tested, installed on commercial tablets, and realized by CIRA
and NAIS and by the Technical University of Braunschweig. Approximately 11
hours of flight were performed, testing different approach procedures in the
presence of simulated air traffic. The tests allowed gathering data that will
be used for the evaluation of the Safety, Capacity, Operational Efficiency
performance indicators and for the assessment of Human Factors and navigation
systems performance. The GRADE team, coordinated by CIRA, is composed of
BULATSA, DLR, MATS, NAIS, TUBS, UNIPARTH and is supported by ISSNOVA as a
linked third party. The GRADE project received funding from the SESAR Joint
Undertaking under the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
under grant agreement 783170. Information on the GRADE project is available
at http://www.gradeproject.eu/
