Air Transport

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is considering adjusting its certification technical requirements for global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers to include Europe's new European Geostationary Overlay Navigation Service (EGNOS).

EGNOS, expected to be fully operational next March, is a satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) that uses the US military's Navstar Global Positioning System to provide accurate position information. It enables aircraft with a GNSS/SBAS receiver to carry out Category 1 precision approaches without an instrument landing system.

The USA already has such a service at hundreds of runways following the completion in 2003 of its SBAS service, known as the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS). "As the technical requirements of the WAAS and the EGNOS are the same we have received several comments to change the [technical standards order]," says EASA. The developers of EGNOS - the European Space Agency, European Union and European air traffic management organisations - worked with the US Federal Aviation Administration in the 1990s and adopted WAAS technical specifications.