Last year in Toulouse, France, Eurocopter completed two series of tests that demonstrated the feasibility of satellite-navigation precision approaches for helicopters. Europe, which lags behind the U.S. in creating satnav nonprecision approaches for helicopters, has almost completed some research toward addressing that imbalance. The purpose of the approaches is to incorporate helicopter traffic into airports without interfering with existing airplane traffic. The tests in Toulouse were part of a European research program dubbed Optimal.
The European manufacturer used an EC 155 Dauphin dedicated to system demonstration. During the testing, the rotorcraft flew 13.5 hours in 58 sorties.
“We tried steep approaches–six and nine degrees–toward Toulouse Airport’s final approach and takeoff [FATO] helicopter area,” Philippe Rollet, Eurocopter’s research manager for operations, told AIN. Eurocopter selected Toulouse for the trials because it features one of the few experimental ground-based augmentation systems (GBAS, the international designation of the U.S. LAAS) in Europe, therefore allowing tests of both GBAS and the so-far-experimental EGNOS satellite-based augmentation system (Europe’s WAAS equivalent).
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