Instrument Approaches Built for Helicopters, Flown in a Fixed-Wing Airplane

Electra has been flying its EL2 demonstrator on instrument procedures written in the manner of rotorcraft approaches. The goal was to see whether an airplane could work the kinds of places normally left to helicopters: heliports, taxiways and other surfaces that were never designed as runways. For an owner, the question is how far a fixed-wing aircraft's instrument access could reach beyond the runway environment that decides where it can go today. These were test flights, and exploratory ones. Nothing in them changes where anyone can file to this season.

With reporting from AVweb.