Rannoch Corporation is pleased to announce a contract to deploy an AirScene wide area multilateration and ADS-B surveillance system for Airways New Zealand early in 2006.
The system will be deployed initially to cover an area of approximately 25 nautical miles around Christchurch International Airport and will provide a platform for operational assessment and certification of the surveillance solution.
It is expected that the system will be extended and subsequently re-deployed to Queenstown, to provide surveillance coverage where traditional radar solutions are not viable or economic. The system will not only provide improved situational awareness and safety, but is also expected to contribute to the growing tourism industry in the area, which can be negatively impacted when planes are delayed or unable to land.
“Wide area multilateration is clearly a technology whose time has come,” said Russell Hulstrom, Vice President International for Rannoch. “Compared to traditional radar solutions, multilateration delivers greater coverage, higher update rates and improved accuracy at a lower cost. Furthermore, AirScene systems provide an ideal path towards an ADS-B future, providing simultaneous decoding of ADS-B data for equipped aircraft and also providing multilateration position information for older aircraft; this being a critical issue for the next few years, as ADS-B equipage levels build up,” added Hulstrom.
Two weeks ago, Rannoch announced initial operational status of an extreme wide area multilateration/ADS-B system in Taiwan. That system, believed to deliver the largest operational coverage distance in the world stretches over 100nm from the main island of Taiwan to the island of Kinmen, close to the Chinese mainland and is made possible through Rannoch’s unique, patented approach to combined terrestrial and satellite synchronization.
“We are delighted to be working with Airways New Zealand who are widely recognised as a progressive and influential Air Traffic Services provider in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Alex Smith, CEO of Rannoch. “2005 has been a great year for Rannoch, with multilateration and ADS-B systems being selected in Taiwan, Egypt, Japan, Canada, and at several airports in the USA. We are looking forward to even greater things in 2006 as the industry becomes ever more accepting of the value of multilateration as a surveillance option.”
Rannoch will work with both the Taiwanese and New Zealand authorities to certify the systems for operational use during 2006.
Airways New Zealand is responsible for managing all domestic and international air traffic and navigation systems in two Flight Information Regions that collectively make up one of the largest areas of airspace in the world. The Auckland Oceanic Flight Information Region and the NZ Domestic FIR combined cover 34 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean extending from the South Pole to five degrees south of the equator.