The UK’s air traffic service provider NATS commercial arm, NATS Services trialled a new ‘Detect and Avoid’ (DAA) system at the Farnborough International Airshow (FIA) 2024 together with Altitude Angel, the world’s most trusted UTM (Unified Traffic Management) technology provider.
During the show, they utilised Arrow ground-based DAA systems to continuously monitor the airspace for low-level objects such as Drones and small aircraft operating at low levels.
Under current systems, small low-flying aircraft can be difficult to track but the new DAA technology used at FIA allowed NATS and Altitude Angel to demonstrate the capability of the technology to track these aircraft and Drones.
Richard Ellis, NATS Head of New Airspace Users, said: “A pop up service like this one is a great example of how safety can be achieved in very complex environments where non-cooperative drone activity can have a real impact on an airshow. It’s a privilege to be able to demonstrate the capability of the Arrow technology with the authorities at a premier event such as Farnborough Airshow.”
During the show, authorities had access to real-time data gathered by the Arrow towers allowing for safer operation and planning during the event.
Richard Parker, CEO of Altitude Angel, added: “Working alongside Farnborough International and NATS
Services over the course of a very busy airshow is great validation of the performance – and range – of the sensor and software technologies we’ve developed.
“The Airshow is a very busy airspace environment, attended by crowds of hundreds of thousands; our Arrow towers, deployed in just a matter of hours, demonstrated an ability to provide vital intelligence to the authorities, a service that can help to safeguard very complex events.”
The deployment during the show consisted of road-towable mast-based sensors positioned inside the show ground which was able to create a view of lower-level airspace within Farnborough Airport’s flight restricted zone (FRZ) and beyond.
