Hazardous Landings Made Safer by Increased Situational Awareness

Introduction

Name: Captain Carlos Alberto de Azevedo
Location: Sorocaba, Brazil
Industry: Private jet
Honeywell Solutions: Primus Elite Advanced Features and DU 875-high definition liquid crystal displays

With more than 30 years’ aviation experience, including airline and commercial flying, Captain Carlos Alberto de Azevedo has spent the last eight years in the corporate world and has been the chief pilot of a privately-owned Embraer Legacy 650 business jet for over six years. Based in Sorocaba, Brazil, the aircraft clocks up an average flying time of 300 hours a year, transporting from four to eight passengers to various places in Europe and the USA.

Challenge: “Some of the mountain airports we fly to are extremely complicated and you welcome everything you can get to maintain your situational awareness,” said Captain Carlos Alberto de Azevedo.

With this in mind, Azevedo wanted to tune-up the Legacy’s cockpit with the most current technology.

Solution: It was decided to upgrade to Honeywell’s Primus Elite Advanced Features (PEAF). These include a synthetic vision system (SVS) which provides a three-dimensional view of surrounding terrain, airports, runways and obstacles coupled with advanced flight path symbology. Traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) symbology is also displayed as an additional overlay on the moving map display.

“PEAF and the SVS functionality provide comfort and safety particularly in locations such as Aspen,” explained Azevedo.

“The Honeywell synthetic vision system increases our situational awareness in higher risk landings at airports such as Aspen, or Sion in the Swiss Alps. It gives us comfort, safety and highly advantageous operations.”

Benefits: When you perform this operation utilizing synthetic vision it greatly increases your situational awareness. You’re calm in the approach and it helps you feel safe. Although it cannot be used as a main navigation resource, it really helps to make you comfortable in terms of safety.

“Increased situational awareness is something aviation is always looking for and so I really recommend the Honeywell PEAF upgrade. It’s worthwhile because it’s an investment in safety.”