A New Home for the College of Aviation

New BuildingAviation's success in recent years has resulted in new challenges: unprecedented passenger growth, frequent flight delays, concerns about security, growing customer dissatisfaction, congested airport runways, mounting personnel shortages, aging aircraft, and outdated computer systems.

To help address these problems, Embry-Riddle has implemented a plan to bring together an unequaled combination of expertise and technology dedicated to aviation education and research - all in a state-of-the-art Aviation Complex on its Daytona Beach, Fla., campus.

The three-structure education and research complex will feature two buildings housing laboratories and educational facilities in airspace/airport simulation, air traffic management, engineering, flight training, human factors, meteorology, safety science, and software engineering. A third building will be a maintenance hangar where students in the bachelor's degree program in aeronautical systems maintenance will learn.

In May, the 75,000-square-foot first building in the complex opened for summer term classes. Highlights of the building:

First floor

Computer-Based Training Laboratory includes personal computers with interactive programs that simulate basic flight maneuvers, allowing students to repeat specific procedures safely until they gain mastery. The lab also is equipped with aviation training devices that display a small aircraft's cockpit instrument panel and the horizon, and a control device that replicates a yoke, throttle, propeller control, and fuel control.

Flight Tutoring Laboratory features personal computers and aviation flight training devices that will help train future pilots more safely, efficiently, and economically and with less dependence on instructors.

Propulsion and Systems Laboratory gives students studying to become professional pilots a high level of understanding and comfort with the machines they will fly. Instructional technology includes aircraft powerplants for jet turbine engines, general aviation reciprocating engines, static cutaway engine models, and an operational replica of a turbojet's all-glass instrument panel.

Safe Skies Laboratory includes computerized drafting stations; cameras; hazardous materials suits; floor-mounted hoists for lifting, disassembling, and examining aircraft parts; special chemicals; and electron microscopes for determining the cause of an accident.

Sculpture

Second floor

Aircraft Performance Laboratory contains 30 computer stations with monitors replicating the automated glass instrument panel and manual controls of a major transport aircraft. The learning stations are interactively linked to the instructor podium to allow the student to "fly the performance profile" of large transport aircraft and interact with the instructor.

Electronic Navigation Laboratory features special PCs equipped with simple flight controls and Embry-Riddle-developed software that will allow students to compute performance criteria and explore hypothetical flight situations.

Flight Techniques Laboratory is equipped with round tables for seminars supporting collaborative learning.

Third floor

Air Traffic Control Simulation Laboratories house a showcase radar and air traffic control facility, control tower simulator, and air traffic management laboratory built to FAA standards.

Air Traffic Management Research Laboratory allows researchers and students, using the leading-edge Total Airspace and Airport Modeler and Embry-Riddle's proprietary Real-Time Distributed SimulationTM software, to simulate airspace and airport systems and solve problems such as runway incursions, reduce in-flight fuel costs, and streamline ground operations.

Weather Center is linked to a remote weather observation station on the roof of the building and to two Meteorology Laboratories - basic and advanced - enabling the integrated display of weather data to classes in real time.