Cleansky-Green Rotor Craft sub-project 5 aimed at developing and testing new flight procedures for both helicopters and tilt rotors, aiming at significantly reducing environmental impact in terms of noise and gas emissions.

This project contributed to this objective defining and validating, using an integrated Tilt Rotor-ATM simulation platform, new low noise ATC procedures for Tilt Rotor operations.

Low-noise procedures in particular will require to accurately track possibly complex and steep trajectories both in take-off and landing, using optimized paths to avoid highly populated areas, using tilt rotors that have the potential to cruise speeds and altitudes compatible with fixed-wing traffic while taking-off and landing similarly to a conventional helicopter. Such a strategy heavily relies on advanced navigation and piloting aids to guarantee an acceptable level of pilot workload while retaining the benefits of the optimized paths.

Moreover, future expansion of rotary-wing transportation will ask to fly in low visibility conditions under Instrumental Flight Rules (IFR), similarly to fixed-wing aircraft and using again sophisticated guidance means, as foreseen by SESAR, to ensure safety and low pilot workload. The transportation system will be strongly affected by the increased air traffic level and the need to control rotary-wing vehicles in IFR flight, in particular in terms of workload of the air traffic controllers.

The ATM scenario models developed by this proposal will describe the ATM operations for approach and tower/ground control for a short-medium range mission with regard to a context using these new procedures developed for tilt rotors. The inclusion of initial findings of the SESAR initiative on trajectory management will represent another aspect of the innovation of the ATM world taken on board by GRC simulation and of the synergies between the major private/public investments now on-going in Europe."