Airport, ATM and Air Operations Consulting & Engineering

The TCAS system plays a critical role in Air Traffic Management (ATM) and is used as a last resort safety net to avoid aircraft collision, irrespective of separation rules. This system is mandatory worldwide onboard civil aircraft since 2003.
 
Under the umbrella of EUROCONTROL and in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Air Safety Authority (EASA), Egis  – represented by a team from Egis Avia – and DSNA developed solutions to enhance the safety performance of this system. There were two overriding reasons for revising the TCAS MOPS (Minimum Operational Performance Standards): the failure of TCAS to reverse, in some situations, Resolution Advisories (RA) when a reversal is required to resolve the collision threat (e.g. the Überlingen accident scenario in Germany in July 2002); and the observation that, not infrequently, flight crews unintentionally manoeuvre in the wrong direction to a specific type of RA.
 
The proposed dates by EASA for the mandatory carriage of this new TCAS version are March 2012 for forward fit and December 2015 for all other aircraft. However, Airbus is already equipping some new production aircraft following the certification by EASA of two of its version 7.1 platforms. At the end of January 2011, already eight A320 family aircraft are equipped leading to an actual implementation in operations of TCAS II version 7.1. Some A330/A340 family aircraft will start to be equipped from February 2011.
 
This operational implementation provides improvements which should dramatically cut collision risk for the equipped aircraft. It is the culmination of the works conducted by the Egis Avia’s Surveillance, Separation and Safety team in contributing to TCAS safety benefits over the last 15 years.