Synthetic generation of airport familiarization using geo information systems

An Airport Qualification may be required for a pilot to receive qualification for the execution of an approach or departure from a terrain, weather, or procedure challenging airport. The FAA identified these challenging airports and calls them "Special Pilot Qualification Airports". This Qualification may be accomplished through a familiarization using airport images or through a familiarization flight with an authorized person. Currently, Jeppesen offers Airport Familiarization Charts. These charts depict approach procedure photos to a runway from the pilot's perspective and aerial views of the airport. Before the approach, Pilots make use of these photos to get familiarized with the airport, the runway layout, the approach and terrain. This paper describes a new possibility to generate airport familiarization images using Remote Sensing Data, terrain data, airport vector data, obstacles and approach procedure data through GIS. The objective is to replace analogues photos with synthetic pictures. Finally, an overview of the potential feature extensibility of the Synthetic Airport Familiarization System is presented.