AvBuyer Magazine, May 2015 by Ken Elliott
Download a PDF of the article.
Helping you understand avionics advances and related mandates for equipage, Ken Elliot reviews aviation technologies within the NextGen/SESAR architecture, this month focusing on TCAS 7.1.
The midair collision over the Grand Canyon between two airliners in 1956 spurred the collaboration of industry and government in the development of a collision warning system. After a number of years using passive avoidance systems, industry realized the need for a predictive system, involving complimentary avoidance interaction between conflicting aircraft. In other word, if one aircraft decides to avoid another by climbing, the other aircraft needs to correspondingly descend. This necessary evolution eventually became TCAS II, with TCAS I being an advisory-only version of collision avoidance.
While technological advancements flourished, there was still a need for a practical solution that would avoid nuisance alerts in high-de...