Improving air navigation service for general aviation by using data-link

The General Aviation (GA) community in Sweden (and often elsewhere) is overrepresented in statistics such as accidents, incursions, unauthorized flights in controlled airspace to mention some. One way of improving the service to GA community, and thereby enhancing safety both for GA and commercial aviation in Swedish airspace is to improve pilot situational awareness as well as additional surveillance in and around controlled airspace. During the course of a 3 year evaluation project, this has been done by providing data-link and cockpit display capability to low-end GA aircraft. The participating aircraft was able to; send their position to the air traffic control with better low altitude coverage, have own-ship position displayed on a moving map, receive surrounding traffic presented overlaid on the map, get updated weather information on the cockpit display. The goal of the project was to assess the technical feasibility and potential operational benefit to GA pilots, if data-link services where provided. The results from the trials and feedback from Stakeholders revealed that the capabilities provided by the data-link equipage and associated applications provide major benefits, especially for the flight information (weather etc.) and improved low level surveillance which can be used in pilot training and potentially in search and rescue operations. The GA community as a group is extremely diverse, both in terms of aircraft owner s financial strength, pilot experience and aircraft capabilities., Therefore, based on the findings, the next step is to assess the applications of interest for a broad implementation, the financial aspect to the services and the technical platform to support these applications.