Flight Test Results of a MOPS Compliant LAAS System to Provide Guided Straight and Curved Path Departures and Missed Approaches

This paper presents the results of flight tests conducted at the University of Oklahoma in the use of a MOPS compliant LAAS system to provide guidance for departures, missed approaches, and balked landings. The tests were conducted under the direction of FAA Procedures and Flight Standards branches for the development of new TERPS standards and criteria for using the LAAS system as a CAT I landing system. The tests were conducted using Category A, and B aircraft. All missed approaches were preceded by a LAAS CAT I precision approach. All procedures were hand flown by a pool of pilots that was representative of a wide range of time and experience levels. The paper will detail the LAAS station used, the airborne suite and type of aircraft used, the nature of the tests, the flight procedures that were used, and the pilot reaction and evaluation of the guided departures and missed approaches. The paper will present the results of the flight tests in a statistical manner. Flight tracks will be shown and the results of a statistical analysis of these flight tracks will be presented in the form of a containment volume. The results will be presented in the light of level of Navigation System Error (NSE), Flight Technical Error (FTE), and Total System Error (TSE) for the procedures. Initial results indicate that guided departures using LAAS can maintain a degree of accuracy better than the lateral envelope of the ILS approach metric. The paper will also present an evaluation of the LAAS station performance during the flight test period as well as the performance of the airborne platform. The procedures were conducted on several runways at different airports in the LAAS service region. The results were normalized to a single runway, but represent a wide variety of cross wind conditions.