OPERATIONAL RELEVANCE
Helicopter operations frequently involve landing zones that are not known in advance and may include highways, fields, parking lots, remote utility corridors, or confined terrain environments. As a result, pilots must often assess visibility in areas lacking nearby certified weather reporting infrastructure. Let’s face it; we have to already “be there” to “see” what’s going on. Just what if a first-responder, LZ Commander, etc. was able to utilize this app and relay that information to us in a timely fashion?
The Visibility Tool is intended as a supplemental situational-awareness aid for:
• •
Off-airport landing zone assessment En route visibility evaluation
• Remote area weather reconnaissance • •
Pre-arrival landing zone coordination
Operational risk assessment in marginal visual meteorological conditions
LIMITATIONS
As one could imagine, the system depends on adequate image quality and environmental contrast conditions. Measurement performance may be degraded under various conditions such as:
• Low-light or night operations
• Lens contamination or image blur • •
Uniform visual scenes lacking identifiable terrain features Severe precipitation or atmospheric obscuration
When measurement confidence is insufficient, the application generates an error message instructing the user to repeat the measurement or reassess environmental conditions. In a perfect world, I would love to see a product capable of night-time use. Perhaps that will happen as technology evolves.
Obviously, the application is not intended to replace certified meteorological observations or pilot judgment. Rather, it serves as a supplemental operational aid designed to improve situational awareness and safety in areas where conventional visibility observations are unavailable or operationally unrepresentative. “Safety begins with knowing what you can actually see—not what the nearest weather station reported 15 minutes ago. Visibility Tool provides pilots with instantaneous, location-specific visibility measurements that enable safer go/no-go decisions and reduces the risk of inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions,” said Ethan Krimins, president of FlightProfiler, the company who developed the tool.
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July/Aug 2026
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