In an important landmark for commercial helicopter operations in India, a Performance Based Navigation (PBN) flight demonstration was recently undertaken from Mumbai to Pune.
This is the first-ever flight demonstration of PBN undertaken by a helicopter in Asia. The flight was made using an Airbus Helicopter H145.
In a tweet, the Ministry of Civil Aviation stated that the flight demonstration of point-in-space departure from Juhu Airport and Low-Level Route (LLR RNP0.3) to Pune using GAGAN had been successfully validated.
Many of the modern helicopters today feature advanced on-board avionics which is compliant with the technical system requirements needed to fly routes with very high accuracy (RNP1/RNP0.3) within 1.0/0.3 nautical miles on either side of the nominal flight path at least 95% of the time. This will aid in providing dedicated helicopter narrow corridors (Low-Level IFR routes).
Speaking at the 4th Heli-India Summit, held in New Delhi last year, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said that work was already underway on the upgradation of Juhu Helibase which is the largest in the country, to accommodate night operations and helicopter Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) routes using GAGAN.
Three helicopter corridors from Mumbai-Pune, Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar, and Shamshabad-Begumpet have also been created, and new IFR corridors are planned.
GAGAN is an Indian Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) jointly developed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and is the first such system developed for India and neighbouring countries in the equatorial region.
GAGAN was certified by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation in 2015 for Approach with Vertical Guidance (APV 1) and en-route (RNP 0.1) operations. It is one of only four space-based augmentation systems available in the world, namely India (GAGAN), US (WAAS), Europe (EGNOS) and Japan (MSAS).
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