We Don’t Need No Stinking VFR

Dassault Aviation, the legacy manufacturer of capable, tasteful, eminently French, military and business aircraft, has received FAA and EASA approval of FalconEye—an advanced, dual heads-up display—on its Falcon 8X very-long-range trijet. The system’s dual Heads-Up Display (HUD) configuration will ultimately permit an EFVS-to-land capability in near zero-zero conditions—pending ever-changing EASA regulations.

Enhanced flight vision systems (EFVS, sometimes EVS) are collections of air-going gadgets that provide pilots a visual perspective of the flight-environment that exceeds in scope and clarity what can be seen with the naked eye. Such systems comprise sensors the likes of color or infrared cameras and radar, and relay visual information to pilots via a dedicated cockpit display—typically a HUD or a head-mounted-display.

Dassault executive vice president Carlos Brana states: “The bottom line is that this approval results in enhanced safety and more capability for Falcons equipped with Dassault’s industry-first FalconEye technology,”

Dassault Aviation has been a front-runner in the development of HUD technology. In 2016, the company introduced FalconEye, the first heads-up display (HUD) system to combine synthetic, database-driven terrain mapping and actual thermal and low-light camera images. Today, single HUD-equipped aircraft with FalconEye can fly non-precision approaches to 100 feet. NON-precision! One-hundred-feet!

By allowing both aircrew members to share the same synthetic and enhanced vision view, the FalconEye system enables one pilot to act as “pilot flying” while the other monitors flight conditions. By bettering situational awareness, dual-HUDs increase pilot confidence, improve pilot awareness, and greatly enhance the safety of flying in low-visibility conditions.  

The dual HUD option will be certified on the Falcon 6X, due to enter service mid-2023, and on the ultra-long-range Falcon 10X, the certification of which is slated for late 2025.

The dual HUD on the Falcon 10X will be certified to serve as the primary means of pilot operation, thereby freeing pilots to configure the primary displays of their aircrafts’ instrument panels for other uses.

After reviewing improvements to HUD and EFVS technology, EASA eased its approval requirements for such systems. Ergo, aircraft currently equipped with Dassault’s HUD and FalconEye systems can now operate to two-hundred-feet with a thirty-percent runway visual range (RVR) credit without flight-department specific EASA approval.

FMI: www.dassault-aviation.com