ALG is a combination of raster imaging sensor, head-up displays, flight guidance and procedures which allow pilots to perform hand flown aircraft maneuvers in adverse weather, at night, or in low visibility conditions at facilities with minimal or no ground aids. Maneuvers in the context of ALG relate to takeoff, landing, rollout, taxi and terminal parking. Commercial needs are driven by potential revenue savings since today only 43 Type III and 80 Type II instrumented landing system (ILS) runway ends in the United States are equipped for lower minimum flight operations. Additionally, most of these ILS facilities are clustered at major gateway airports which further impacts on dispatch authority and general ATC regional delays. Infrastructure consists to upgrade additional runways must not only account for the high integrity ground instrumentation, but also the installation of lights and markers mandated for Cat III operations. The military services ability to train under realistic battlefield conditions, to project power globally in support of national interests, while providing humanitarian aid, is significantly impaired by the inability to conduct precision approaches and landings in low visibility conditions to either instrumented runways or to a more tactical environment with operations into and out of unprepared landing strips, particularly when time does not permit deployment of ground aids and the verification of their integrity. Recently, Lear Astronics, in cooperation with Consortium members of the ALG Program, concluded a flight test program which evaluated the utility of the ALG system in meeting both civil and military needs. Those results are the subject of this paper.

Date Published: 26 June 1997
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 3088, Enhanced and Synthetic Vision 1997, (26 June 1997); doi: 10.1117/12.277241

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3088:
Enhanced and Synthetic Vision 1997
Jacques G. Verly, Editor(s)