PLANET2

Objectives

PLANET2 aims at providing business and regional aviation with in-flight information updates on weather conditions and hazards, while contributing at the same time to the observation of the atmosphere thanks to in-situ measurements (e.g. pressure, temperature, and wind) sent from the aircraft to the weather agencies.

Besides, the system targets in-flight reporting of dangerous encountered weather conditions via the delivery of digital PIREPs (pilot reports) to other aircrafts, and other non-meteorological services such as in-flight messaging or monitoring.

PLANET2 is a spin-off of the PLANET project (ARTES 3-4 Newcomers), successfully completed in September 2011 with the development of prototype service and on-board Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) targeting the light/small aircraft segment.

Thanks to the “collaborative meteo concept” (i.e. fruition of weather services and provision of weather observation data at the same time), PLANET2 aims at:

• Increasing considerably the number of in-situ measurements made available to weather agencies, which are nowadays provided only by commercial airlines serving a very limited number of airports,
• Increasing significantly the European geographical area of measurements, thanks to many new routes/airports targeted by business and regional aviation,
• provide valuable and cost attractive weather information service to business and regional aviation pilots in return for their provision of in-situ measurements.

The main objective of this project is to develop the PLANET2 platform (inclusive of on-board units and ground segment), and to validate the service through a pilot phase with potential customers.

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Features

The PLANET2 system will implement the following main features:

• Before the flight, a complete weather briefing (e.g. significant weather and wind aloft charts of destination aerodrome), will be accessed via terrestrial networks (LTE, 3G, or GPRS, depending on availability),
• During the flight the following data will be received and transmitted at regular intervals by the aircraft via satellite communication means (e.g. Iridium):
  • Updates of destination aerodrome weather conditions, weather hazards objects (Convection Nowcast) and PIREPS (Pilot Reports),
  • Tracking of aircraft location, air temperature and pressure data.
• During the descent phase, air pressure and temperature will be sampled at a faster rate and compiled in a descent profile observation report that will be sent through terrestrial networks just after landing.

As shown in the architecture diagram below, the main actors are:

• Airspace users for weather products or messaging services,
• Weather Agencies, who receive in-situ measurements and PIREPs and provide weather products,
• Flight Operators for monitoring and messaging services,
• Civil Aviation Authority as providers of Aeronautical Information Service (AIS).

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Project Plan

The project, which will take 21 months, aims at developing the PLANET2 platform, and validating the service through a 12 months Pilot phase with potential customers. Several hours of flight demonstrations will be performed on light aircrafts and on “business-like” flight research aircrafts.

Challenges

The following challenges are expected:

• To obtain the Electro-Magnetic Interference qualification, required for flight demonstrations on “business-like” flight research aircraft,
• Validation of state-of-the art meteo objects, which allow satellite bandwidth saving and easy interpretation by the pilot.

Benefits

Provide an innovative and competitive commercial solution based on:

• Higher number of in-situ measurements made available to weather agencies thanks to new routes added by business and regional aviation,
• Cost attractive weather information service to business and regional aviation pilots in return for their provision of in-situ measurements,
• Potential support of other added value applications such as aircraft health monitoring.

Current Status (dated: 12 Feb 2013)

The PQR has been successfully held at TryaGnoSys (G) premises on 7th Feb 2013, with the successful demonstration of a comprehensive sub-set of test scenarios.

The consortium has started working on the deployment and testing activities of the PLANET2 kit onboard a research aircraft in preparation of the SDA planned in Jun2013.