Terrain collision (CFIT) is by far the largest threat to Air Transport, both in terms of number of accidents and fatalities. According to the latest 'statistical summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents', there were 56 CFIT accidents between 1987 and 2004, causing the loss of 3,631 lives.

Therefore Ground proximity warning systems (GPWS) are mandatory for all passenger aircraft.
State-of the-art on terrain functions gives an overview how current systems support the crew.

FLYSAFE will develop new terrain and obstacle presentations with enhanced terrain situation awareness to be shown to the pilot under conditions to be defined:

• Cartographic presentation, providing the crew with a presentation of terrain altitude relative to sea level. Such a presentation will take into account the technical constraints of Air Transport aircraft architecture.
• 2D ½ presentation (shading effect) on ND to be compared to the cartographic one. This will capitalise on the experience gained in ISAWARE (I and II).
• 3D presentation of terrain on Navigation Display (ND) for longer-term development in commercial air transport market. Such a function is already proposed on some business aircraft, but is not ready for air transport (mainly human factor issues, training and integration with the other systems). The study will also review the technical issues of database resolution, availability and requirements for 3D presentation, and system architecture in a commercial aircraft.