Bell Helicopter and Hughes Aerospace are looking at developing performance-based navigation (PBN) for Bell Helicopter customers in China flying with advanced onboard navigation. “PBN would allow our customers safer and optimized access to airspace, allowing them to fly the more direct approaches and departures helicopters are suited for, rather than having to fly circuitous IFR-based or fixed-wing aircraft patterns,” said Chris Jaran, v-p Bell Helicopter, China.

PBN is a general term that defines navigation performance requirements for an air traffic route, instrument procedure, or defined portion of airspace. PBN uses satellite-based navigation to deliver lower approach minimums resulting in fewer weather-related delays and diversions; fuel savings due to less flight time through optimized routing; and more reliable, repeatable flight paths. It can be an important tool in lowering the possibility of controlled flight into terrain and other weather-related risks.

Bell is partnering with Hughes Aerospace in China. Hughes is authorized by the FAA and ICAO as a third-party instrument flight-procedure service provider and is also authorized to conduct instrument flight procedure validation testing. Hughes Aerospace has participated in PBN projects throughout North America, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Houston-based Hughes provides solutions for a communications, navigation and surveillance (CNS) systems-based approach for regulators, operators, facilities and air traffic management organizations worldwide. It custom-tailors PBN solutions with existing ATC engineering, safety management systems and flight operations including air carrier, business and commercial, vertical flight, and unmanned aerial systems. Hughes is designated by the FAA to provide both flight and obstacle validation of PBN procedures and is the only OTA (other transaction authority) designated by the agency for both fixed-wing and helicopters, including WAAS LPV procedure examination authority. Hughes can design PBN for all types of aircraft and can also validate and maintain them. Hughes FAA certified flight crews can provide their own aircraft for flight inspections or provide augmentation on customers’ aircraft.

Hughes’ recent experience in Asia includes designing PBN procedures with Honeywell for the Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport in Tacloban, Philippines (RPVA) last year after that airport’s sole ground-based VOR navaid was lost during Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. The new procedures’s capability hastened the region’s recovery from the disaster. Before PBN was implemented, the typhoon damage had limited RPVA to daylight VFR operations.

Hughes believes that PBN has a big future in Asia as that continent (including China) remains the most vulnerable to, and receives more, natural disasters than anywhere else on the planet.

The devastation wrought by the 2008 earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province has been cited as the main catalyst for reform of the Chinese air traffic control system, according to a November 2014 staff report published by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “The earthquake disabled the area’s chief ATC tower and radar, disrupting air traffic in western China,” the report noted. It added: “Because harsh terrain and road damage hampered ground-based relief efforts, airlift proved to be the most useful method for delivering aid. However, according to some estimates, thousands died in the initial days after the earthquake due to a delay in aid delivery. Much of this delay can be attributed to shortfalls in the PLA’s [People’s Liberation Army’s] logistics and strategic airlift, but inefficiencies in ATC also played a role.”

Eighty percent of China’s airspace remains off-limits to civilian air traffic and the military’s control of the airspace remains dependent on ground-based systems.

Besides compensating for the destruction of ground-based ATC infrastructure in a disaster, PBN can also leverage NextGen technologies to bring increased efficiencies to airspace users, according to Hughes. In the U.S. last year, at Chicago O’Hare International Airport (KORD), Hughes implemented Required Navigation Performance (RNP) Authorization Required (AR) instrument flight procedures completely independent of ground navigation equipment. Jeff Witt, managing director of navigation services at Hughes, said that “the majority of the operators at O’Hare equipped [their aircraft] and certified [them] for RNP AR, and we are excited to see this new procedure providing benefits immediately."

According to the FAA, airlines such as American, Alaska, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, United and US Airways, and business jet operators including NetJets, are already using RNP AR instrument procedures as part of NextGen technology implementation.

Hughes was issued an FAA letter of authorization in 2012 to perform flight validation activities in accordance with FAA Order 8900.1 and Advisory Circular 90-113. Authorization includes ground and airborne obstacle assessment, simulator evaluation and flight validation of PBN instrument flight procedures for both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. Hughes also participates with ICAO’s PBN “Go-Team.”