In-Flight Wake Encounter Prediction with the Wake Encounter Avoidance and Advisory System (WEAA)

Kurzfassung

DLR is working on a Wake Encounter Advisory & Avoidance (WEAA) system to allow pilots to avoid potentially dangerous wake vortex encounters by a tactical evasion maneuver. Such maneuver is of small scale i.e. it tries to adhere to the planned flight track as closely as possible and is not intended to require ATC permission. The paper introduces system design and core functions of the WEAA system (meteorological data fusion, wake vortex prediction, trajectory prediction and conflict detection, hazard evaluation, avoidance trajectory generation, alerting and guidance) and briefly describes DLR's technical solutions. Initial results will be presented for the system implementation including first results from recent flight tests for on-board conflict detection employing DLR's Falcon 20E and A320 Advanced Technology Research Aircraft (ATRA).