ST.PETERSBURG. Dec 26 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia has designed devices and software enabling the crew of an aircraft to get a genuine picture of the terrain during blind flight.
The equipment can prevent accidents similar to the AN-140 crash in Iran this week, head of the trainer department of the St. Petersburg's NITA (New Information Technologies in Aviation) Company Sergei Zhukov told Interfax-Military News Agency Thursday.
"Russia has been designing a new generation of flight and air traffic control trainers for several years now. They give a true picture of the terrain using advanced information technologies and pictures of Earth taken from the outer space," Zhukov said.
"The equipment may be installed onboard an aircraft for in- flight testing. It is more a matter of political will than money, for it will not be costly. Such equipment has been actively developed across the globe, especially in the United States," he said.
He also said that an October's seminar run by Jeppesen, the supplier of 85 percent of all flight navigation data in the world, in Denver, CL, U.S., included three NASA reports.
NASA experts are developing terrain imagers for crewmembers using an onboard computer model of the terrain and GPS data. The computer simulates the cockpit visual field with due account for heading, pitch, and roll angles, Zhukov said.
He added that Americans performed test flights with such equipment.
"Our equipment is no worse, and we say it should be put onboard to begin tests. This will prevent crashes like those with a Ukrainian plane in Iran, or earlier, in 2000, with a Russian
He also said that NITA-made simulators using satellite photo pictures had been installed in a number of civil aviation centers, including those in Ulyanovsk and St. Petersburg.
The equipment allows one to use software developed for a particular airfield. The database may be optionally enlarged.
"For example, we have received on order from Mongolia for our simulator there. We shall develop training software for pilots and traffic controllers specifically designed for several Mongolian airports," Zhukov said.