CAE Oxford Aviation Academy has taken a novel approach to runway incursions caused by the complex pattern of runways and taxiways at Moorabbin Airport.
The school has installed a taxi simulator to enable students to practice ground techniques and procedures.
Moorabbin is a Class D airport and handles over 250,000 movements a year with the majority of these being flight training. With so much traffic, pilots need to maintain a high level of situational awareness. However it is on the ground where both experienced and student pilots often have issues.
Moorabbin has five runways, nine main taxiways and 16 subsidiary taxiways and is considered one of the most complex airports to safely navigate around.
Runway incursions can be an issue at any airport, however with so many trainee pilots operating in such a complex environment, runway incursions at Moorabbin are a specific problem.
CAE's Taxi Sim is based on MS Flight Simulator, but an add-on graphics pack from Orbx Systems has also been installed that provides photo-quality detail of the airport layout, its various buildings and, most importantly, the pavement markings.
Three large high-definition screens provide realistic taxiing visuals from both sides and front on, and the additional of a good quality control column, rudder pedals and throttle assembly add to the realism of the simulator which comes in at under $3000.
Students can start their “mission” at any point in the airport and they are shown the importance of pavement markings and the location of incursion “hot spots” by their instructor early on in their training. This enables students to become familiar with the layout of Moorabbin and how to follow taxi directions from the tower.
Steve Galjar, Head of Training with CAE Oxford Aviation Academy said “It is anticipated that the taxi simulator will assist our students to develop a higher level of situational awareness when operating on the ground at Moorabbin, thereby hopefully reducing the possibility of runway incursions. Other airports will possibly also feature in the future.”
Airservices Australia staff from Moorabbin Tower were invited to try the sim themselves and were quite impressed. Some commented on how hard it was to taxi at Moorabbin using only the view from the cockpit.