Sydney Airport Tracking System

[Ozfergie]

Is this a concern?

 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-02/plane-tracking-system-regularly-failing-at-sydney-airport/7376740

 

 

[facthunter]

Probably. Depends on how much it is an essential part of the system and what degree of risk it's not working imposes on the operation of the aircraft in the area.. If there is a high dependency on it, It's important to have it functioning. Nev

 

 

[dutchroll]

Hmmm.....

 

So this radar system is critical to ILS PRM approaches.

 

I could count on one hand the number of ILS PRM approaches I've done in Sydney in the last 12 months. However I'd need lots of hands to count the number of ordinary ILS approaches I've done. I personally haven't noticed any significant changes to delays, holding times, etc.

 

 

[old man emu]

Paleese! How about reducing the use of initials and acronyms to those everyone at the recreational end of the spectrum is entirely familiar with?

 

The "PRM" in "ILS PRM" might be the lingua franca of the Braided Gods, but for the cloth caps like me, it's all Greek.

 

OME

 

 

[pmccarthy]

If its Greek you wanted, it means προσγείωση αεροπλάνου.

 

 

[facthunter]

No, it's aviation speak, and if it's in an area you aren't familiar with, totally and understandably, incomprehensible. I also don't believe when we describe where we have just flown on a recent trip, that we should use the YXYZ destination for places en route, for the same reason. Nev

 

 

[dutchroll]

Paleese! How about reducing the use of initials and acronyms to those everyone at the recreational end of the spectrum is entirely familiar with?The "PRM" in "ILS PRM" might be the lingua franca of the Braided Gods, but for the cloth caps like me, it's all Greek.

 

OME

Sorry.....my bad.

ILS Precision Runway Monitor. Applicable to closely spaced parallel runway systems - e.g. Sydney. The use of precision radar equipment (which is what the article is about) allows the aircraft on these parallel runways to be more tightly packed together. Normally due to the proximity of these parallel runways there is a minimum 2nm stagger between approaching aircraft on the left and the right conducting ILS approaches. With the PRM equipment, there is no minimum stagger. They can be right next to each other. There are special ATC and pilot procedures which apply if an aircraft diverges from the localiser course which will result in both aircraft executing a "breakout" (fancy name for a go-round under ATC instructions, turning away from each other).

 

Taking away all the technobabble, the net result is that with this equipment Sydney airport can handle more movements per hour in poor weather conditions. It seems that this equipment is having reliability problems, which means the movement rate would slow down as the 2nm separation would need to be reapplied when it's broken.

 

As far as "safety" concerns go, I'm personally not really too fussed if the equipment works or not. Though it would be a pain for ATC at the last minute to suddenly have to apply the increased separation, and it would cost airlines money as they deal with consequent ATC delays. If the equipment fails while two aircraft are actually on approach next to each other, that doesn't mean they're suddenly going to crash together. They're on autopilot locked to the localiser beam and course deviations under those conditions are exceedingly rare (never seen one in my career personally). It would be more of a problem if two aircraft were head-to-head on opposing vectors about to intercept their respective ILS's simultaneously, and one of them didn't capture it properly and went through it. That's uncommon, but I've seen it happen and it can be due to the pilot not pushing the right button to arm the capture mode and the other pilot not picking up the error, or it can be due to the aircraft nav system not picking up the beam when it should and capturing it late, which is the case I've seen. Of course in this case you also have TCAS helping you (we all know what TCAS is I'm sure!).

 

 

[facthunter]

Some do, but why would ALL know? Nev

 

 

[old man emu]

it means προσγείωση αεροπλάνου.

Oh! Of course! I must've have been having a Senior's moment.

 

Thanks for the explanation, Dutchroll.

 

Of course I know what a TCUP is. It's a bra for a high producing milker.

 

OME

 

 

[Guest Howard Hughes]

I have only done 3 ILS PRM's in 10 years of operating out of Sydney, but then again I'm usually departing in that 0700-0900 period when PRM's usually occur. In an ILS PRM aircraft are separated vertically instead of laterally as they are in VMC. The 80 movements per hour cap probably degrades any efficiencies gained with ILS PRM anyway!

 

 

[dutchroll]

Some do, but why would ALL know? Nev

Sorry...making assumptions again from my experience in forums like VAF where the experimental crowd all seem to know what it is - probably because they're spoiled with Nextrad, the Universal Access Transceiver on 978MHz, etc which give them traffic displays at the drop of a hat, and which we don't have here in Australia.