On April 6, a NetJets Phenom 300 landed on Runway 27 at Bremen Airport in Germany after shooting the first satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) instrument approach in Germany, marking the first time that a “passenger aircraft” flew the Egnos-aided approach and landed in the country. The SBAS system for Europe is the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (Egnos), which supplements GPS and other satellite navigation systems to provide position accuracy to one to three meters from GPS’s typical 10 to 20 meters.

The SBAS approach at Bremen is an LPV-200 procedure with Cat I weather minimums of 200 feet (about 60 meters) decision height and a half-mile visibility. Notably, SBAS approaches require no ground infrastructure once the geostationary Egnos satellites are in place to supplement the GPS signals.  

"In the medium and long term, DFS is planning on making more use of satellite-based navigation for approaches and thus create an alternative to the traditional ILS category I," said Andre Biestmann, director of airspace and ANS support at German air navigation service provider Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS). 

NetJets has equipped the majority of its Europe-based fleet with Egnos receivers. Last year NetJets worked with DFS to test ground-based augmentation system (GBAS) approaches as part of the :Augmented Approaches to Land" project. In May 2016, Europe’s first LPV-200 approach was implemented at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport’s Runway 26L.