Technical and programmatic features of the FAA's LAAS

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is developing and planning to field the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS). LAAS is a Ground-Based Aug mentation System (GBAS) to GPS, and is designed to serve all categories of precision approach. The purpose of this paper is to provide the latest tech nical and status information on the LAAS programme. The technical aspects o f the LAAS specification are discussed, followed by a description of specif ication validation field testing and results. Institutional and programmati c aspects are then summarized along with a chronology of events leading up to the Government Industry Partnership (GIP) for the initial development an d fielding of LAAS.