Friday, October 26, 2012

Fancy working in Australia?

Airservices Australia announces two vacancies:
1. The Chief Flight Procedure Designer
2. A Flight Procedure Designer
3. A trainee Flight Procedure Designer

Details can be checked in the Airservices website.

Please do not get irritated by the statement "ICAO accredited PANS-OPS course". This does not exist, there is no ICAO accreditation for training providers. I have informed Airservices about that.

Friday, September 07, 2012

ICAO OAS software issue

As you may or may not know, the OAS software (as well as the CRM software) are currently not supported, because the company that was maintaining it went bankrupt.
However, in PANS-OPS reference is still made to the software for ILS procedure design.
The current version is 3.3. For ILS, as far as I have seen, the software performs ok. For APV procedures not so much. We can ignore APV II as that concept does not exist anymore.
In APV I we have the following problems:

1. The C coefficient of the W' surface is wrong. It is calculated CW'=-50+RDH*tan(0.75VPA)/tanVPA. Whatever the VPA the result will always be the same at a given RDH. At an RDH of 15m this value is off by 1m.

2. As a result of the above the X coordinates of point C is also wrong. That coordinate is calculated X=|CW'|/AW', (C of W' as absolute value). The Y coordinate is also wrong of course. The Y of point C however needs to be calculated with the X surface coefficients. Y=(Z-C-AX)/B, where A, B, C are X surface coefficients and X is the X of point C that you calculated above.

Important note: Whoever doesn't get that math and is not familiar with the surface equation:a) leave the OAS surfaces alone!!!b) book the ILS Master Class or the advanced PBN course with us.

Then recalculate X/Y of point C as described above.

3. When the RDH is NOT 15m, there is a correction algorithm that moves all surfaces up and down by the delta of the RDH. That is the correct way for all surfaces except the W'. That one must be calculated in a different way:
AW'=tan(0.75VPA)
CW'=–50 + RDH tan(0.75θ)/tan(θ) for APV I

4. As a result of 3) above, the intersection of the W' and the W surface must be recalculated (point C""):

X=(CW-CW')/(AW'-AW).
Y=(Z-C-AX)/Y, where A,B,C are surface coefficients of the X surface, X is the X of point C"" as calculated just before.
Z=AX+C, where A,C are either the W or the W' surface coefficients.

Again: If you do not understand that easily, DO NOT TOUCH the OAS!

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Course Dates for Statistics/Data Analysis

We have set the first course for January 30/31 2013.
Check the course details here. Early registration is required.

Monday, September 03, 2012

Geodesy Course dates published

The dates for the Geodesy course are now set to February 25/26 2013. It is right after part 1 of the PANS-OPS basic, so it could also be combined.
The Geodesy module is also a required module by the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation to get an approval as Flight Validation Pilot within Switzerland.
Course Calendar

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Some thoughts about Flight Procedure Design Training

There are some useful discussion platforms around that help the Flight Procedure community to exchange problems, ideas etc. The ANI operates one of these platforms. There are also others. One thing caught my attention and I decided to comment on it: There seem to be organizations, which believe that they can have Flight Procedure Designers perform their job without a formal training. They read through PANS-OPS, of course they don't get certain things, especially not the rationales behind the criteria and then think they can fill the gap posting questions on a forum.

States should be aware of the following: PANS documents are criteria and have a certain status for Contracting States. That means if a State does not comply with certain paragraphs in PANS, they do NOT have to notify ICAO (like necessary for non-compliance with Annexes) but they MUST publish it in their State AIP (Annex 15 requirement). There is a Quality Assurance chapter in PANS-OPS that says amongst other things:
Each State shall ensure that Designers achieve and maintain the required competency level though training and OJT. Training for Designers should at least include initial training and recurrent training at periodic intervals (you can check the exact text yourself). Initial training according to doc. 9906 is a basic PANS-OPS course.

So it follows that States that think they can save costs by not sending their staff to courses actually deviate from PANS-OPS. Therefore they should publish that in the State AIP. Imagine a statement in the GEN section of the AIP: "Deviations from PANS-OPS ICAO doc. 8168: Flight Procedure Designers not formally trained". I am sure, this would be much appreciated...

The bad news for such Organizations: We (ICAO IFPP) are now also establishing requirements at Annex level that will regulate how Flight Procedure Design Service and its oversight must be established. That is, if they continue to non-comply they even have to notify ICAO about it :-)

Monday, August 27, 2012

New Instructor CV added

As communicated, we have a new two-day course in Statistics and Data analysis. For this course I have hired Heinz Wipf as a lecturer. His CV is now available in the Training team section of the ANI website. Heinz is also one of the Project Managers for the PBN implementation in Switzerland. He is one of the guys who keeps the pace going, by pushing and playing the Rottweiler whenever needed :-)

Friday, August 24, 2012

ARINC 424 course date published

The next ARINC 424 course takes place April 15-19, 2013 in Switzerland. Instructor is Christian Freiesleben. This can also be used for Flight Validation Pilots to meet the Swiss Regulator's criteria for FVP certification.
Check www.ani.aero for other course dates.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Course update/Calendar update

The PANS-OPS basic course date for Winter/Spring 2013 has now been published.
For the advanced course(s) APV/RNP AR/Helicopter PinS we had to adopt the training program because the amount of criteria keeps increasing, so we need more time to cover the theory and also to consolidate with exercises. The changes are as follows:

1. Additional PBN Navigation Specifications according to doc. 9613.
2. Completely revised Baro-VNAV criteria (State Letter expected early 2013, applicability 2014).
3. Additional SBAS LP criteria (no vertical guidance).
4. Course length changed to 10 working days.
4. Helicopter PinS is a separate course now, however it will always be scheduled after the APV course in order to be able to attend a full advanced course in one go if necessary.
5. Additional criteria in the Helicopter course: PinS Approach with Manoeuvering VS, PinS Departure with Direct and Manoeuvering VS, PinS LPV.
6. Course length for the PinS course set to 5 working days.

In the future we will also need to cover LP/VNAV criteria when available.

I am waiting to schedule the following courses in the next couple of days:

ARINC 424
Geodesy
Statistics and Data analysis

Will keep you posted.

The course calendar can be found on the ANI website.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

New: Statistics and Data analysis course

As mentioned in an earlier post, we have put a course for Statistics and Data analysis together. The outline and the content are now established, the course is published on the IFP and ATM master class page. There is a direct link from the www.ani.aero index page.
For this two-day course we offer an all-included package with food and one hotel night.

Dates are not published yet, we are in the process of setting them up. I will communicate it here when they are up in the calendar.

Friday, July 20, 2012

The new PBN manual again

To all guys who write to me because the have no access to the ICAO-Net: I cannot email you a copy (it is too big for most servers), nor can I provide a download link for obvious reasons... We do not have the time to operate a document service, sorry :-)

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

New PBN Manual is published as advance copy

It took a while... The updated PBN Manual with (amongst other) the new Navigation Specifications
RNP 2
RNP 0.3 (mainly used as enroute specifications for helicopter OPS)
A-RNP
has now been published by ICAO as advance copy on the ICAO NET.
I guess, this will greatly influence the future of PBN implementation.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

New ANI course calendar application is online

I have now updated the calendar application on the ANI website. All (currently) scheduled courses are published through the application, including the PANS-OPS basic and PANS-OPS advanced courses for summer/autumn.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

The dice have been cast - Course dates for the rest of the year

Here are the course dates for PANS-OPS basic and PANS-OPS advanced courses. The advanced course covers the APV-Baro VNAV, APV SBAS, RNP AR and Helicopter PinS criteria.

PANS-OPS basic part 1: August 20 - September 7
PANS-OPS basic part 2: October 22 - November 9
PANS-OPS advanced: November 12 - 21

Other courses like ARINC 424 etc. will follow.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

PBN Symposium in Montreal October 16 to 19

Please note that ICAO holds a PBN Symposium the the headquarters in Montreal that is open for experts and industry. You can find more information on
http://www.icao.int/Meetings/PBN-Symposium/Pages/default.aspx

This is a symposium that can lead to an action plan that is the fed into the Air Navigation Conference held in November this year.
Probably a good place to see people one hasn't seen in a while :-)

Monday, March 05, 2012

Change of venue for AIS/MAP course

The AIS/MAP course held from April 23 till May 4, 2012 does now take place in Belgrade. Whoever is interested to participate should look at booking the Hotel Moskva near Belgrade's city center pedestrian zone. It's only a 10 minute walk from the course venue.