Nascio – navigation SESAR concepts involving operators
The Navigation SESAR Concepts Involving Operators project (hereafter named as NASCIO) is framed as follow up of activities initiated under the technological pillar of the Single European Sky (SES) initiative. This project aims at integrating, in a coordinated manner, various ongoing initiatives performed within different Research and Technological Frameworks, to develop new advanced navigation concepts defined within SESAR.
The NASCIO project is focused on the demonstration of the new Navigation Specifications described in the new PBN Manual, throughout eight scenarios involving all the key players of the Advanced ATM value chain: ANSPs, CAAs, operators (corporative, regional, commercial) and types of aircraft (rotorcraft, fixed wing).
In this regard, it is worth it to mention that, the NASCIO activity is fully aligned with SESAR Air Traffic Management System. Specifically, NASCIO project deals with activities linked to the following subjects:
- Satellite based Navigation: all the activities within the NASCIO project are proposed in order to demonstrate the benefits of the navigation based on GNSS to the widest audience.
- Approach Procedures with Vertical Guidance: most of the activities of the NASCIO project are dedicated to the demonstration or even the operational implementation of the new APV SBAS procedures. The objective is mainly to demonstrate the advantages of APV procedures into the rotorcraft domain (by the so-called RNAV PinS procedures), whilst implementing the procedure for fixed-wing operations.
- Optimised RNP: there is one activity at NASCIO fully aligned with the demonstration of the RNP concept. In particular, the intention is extent to the rotorcraft domain the most challenging procedures existing today: RNP-AR. The goal is therefore to perform some flight test in a very constraining scenario, taking advantage of some material and concepts developed in the framework of different European Projects.
- Enhanced situational awareness: the impact of the implementation of APV procedures is definitely and improved situational awareness for the pilots. In particular the incidence of Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) which has occurred in a number of fatal crashes in general aviation (including rotorcraft) over the past decade can be reduced.
- Advanced flexible use of airspace: The new GNSS technologies offer several benefits for rotorcraft, and in the forthcoming years it is expected a wide deployment of new IFR procedures purely dedicated to rotorcraft. As a result, the introduction of rotorcraft flying in IFR inside busy airports is an important gap to be filled. The NASCIO project includes an activity which aims the testing of Simultaneous non-Interfering operations between helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft in Barcelona airport.
Various locations have been defined for the realisation of each scenario, getting a range of environments with different EGNOS SIS coverage status (Western Europe, Eastern Europe and North Africa).