Honeywell, Hughes To Provide PBN at Tacloban Airport

For Free

1 May 2014

Honeywell and Hughes Aerospace has agreed to develop performance-based navigation (PBN) procedures for Tacloban’s Daniel Z. Romualez airport for free.

“Honeywell and Hughes will absorb the entire cost of the development of these approaches at the airport to ensure that the flow of relief supplies is not impacted.” says Honeywell in a statement.

PBN Procedures for Tacloban Airport cost US $300,000.00 and was donated by its local representative DPS-SmartPath Navigational Systems, Inc., to CAAP Director General William K. Hotchkiss III and Deputy Director General John C. Andrews Wednesday.

Canadian-based Honeywell says the implementation of PBN will allow better access to the airport in difficult weather conditions, which should speed the flow of airborne relief supplies following potential future natural disasters.

“The situation at Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport was severe as Typhoon Haiyan had completely destroyed the ground-based navigational aid. As a result, the only Instrument Flight Procedure serving Tacloban was lost, limiting the airport to daytime operations in fair weather, which could potentially limit recovery and relief efforts,” Chris Baur, president and chief executive of  Hughes Aerospace said.

The new performance-based navigation (PBN) approaches for Tacloban will allow the airport to move away from legacy ground-based navigational aids to better satellite-based technologies using Philippine Area navigation procedures as this will allow aircraft to fly more stable and accurate flight paths, allowing shorter and more direct routes as well as more efficient takeoffs and landings.

Deputy Director General John C. Andrews said that “four other airports utilizing satellite-based navigation were commissioned about three years ago and done by Amadeus,” an airline information technology firm.

The four terminals with PBN procedures in place were the airport in Dumaguete, Butuan, Legazpi, and Laguindingan. 

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) is presently developing a performance-based navigation (PBN) system procedure for the entire country in cooperation with the French Civil Aviation Authority and Quovadis, an Airbus company specializing in flight operations systems.

Quovadis, an Air Navigation Service (ANS) provider is developing full PBN network of 11 major airports in the Philippines aside from NAIA. The 11 airports are Puerto Princesa, Zamboanga, Butuan, Dumaguete, Legazpi, Iloilo, Clark, Bacolod, Tacloban, Cagayan de Oro, and Kalibo.

Under the Flight Procedures Program (FPP), 20 airports should have PBN approaches in 2014 but Implementation of PBN at a number of airports is delayed pending validation of instrument flight procedures.

At Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) for example, Standard Instrument Departure (SID) and Standard Terminal Arrival (STAR) procedures are only being used at certain times as it is not clear to ATC which airlines are currently authorised to conduct PBN operations for training purposes and co-ordination is required to permit airlines to use PBN procedures in Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC) for training and familiarization prior to full implementation.