Safety and Technology Trends

Air Safety Week, Oct 6, 2008

This is Your Captain Sleeping

The two go! pilots that that fell asleep on the inter-island CRJ-200 hop last winter, completed their FAA-imposed suspensions on September 9. However, they have long since been fired by go! parent Mesa Air Group. The flight Honolulu-Hilo, flew beyond Hilo while ATC tried to raise them. Captain Scott Oltman and First Officer Dillon Shepley had twice the required rest before embarking on the flight last February. The FAA cited Oltman for careless and reckless operation of an aircraft and failing to maintain radio contact in its 60-day suspension order, according to the Pacific Business News. Shepley was suspended for 45 days for careless and reckless operation of an aircraft.

Latest NextGen Work Plan Available

The NextGen Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) has released the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) Integrated Work Plan: A Functional Outline (Version 1.0). The Integrated Work Plan (IWP) is a tool to support the collaborative planning and deliberation needed by government partners and stakeholders to prioritize needs, establish commitments, coordinate efforts, and focus resources on the work needed to achieve NextGen. The IWP provides comprehensive information about the elemental operational improvements, enablers, development, and research milestones as well as policies needed to make NextGen a reality. The IWP is intended to facilitate coordination with NextGen government and industry partners as they implement NextGen. Over the past three years, the JPDO engaged hundreds of aviation professionals, engineers, subject matter experts, analysts, and planners across the federal government, industry, and the public in the development of the IWP Version 1.0. The content has undergone a thorough review and commenting process. Over 3,000 comments were received from the review of Versions 0.1 and 0.2 and are now incorporated, as appropriate, into Version 1.0. For more information and to view the IWP Version 1.0, visit www.jpdo.gov.

Civil/Military SESAR Interoperability Discussed

A civil-military workshop recently identified the key issues to be addressed in order to ensure civil-military datalink interoperability in the future air traffic management system.

The workshop, concluded that if interoperability is to be ensured, security constraints, information modeling, spectrum interference, military operational and technical requirements and the financial impact of SESAR all need to be addressed as a priority. The importance of initiating studies analyzing the opportunities and constraints of the reuse of existing and planned military capabilities is also seen as important. "To find jointly acceptable solutions, we need to ensure that the military authorities are fully involved in the SESAR development phase," said Jean-Robert Cazarre, director of civil- military ATM coordination at EUROCONTROL. In the longer term, interoperability and the convergence of civil and military technologies supporting data-link is the only real way forward."

Euro Flight Demos for CAT I Approaches

Rockwell Collins recently participated in flight demonstrations of European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS) Localizer Performance with Vertical guidance (LPV) approaches in Europe. The company's Flight Management System (FMS) and GPS-4000S global positioning system receiver were on board an Air Nostrum operated Bombardier CRJ-200 aircraft for the flights. Rockwell Collins is participating in a European consortium called GIANT that is working to implement EGNOS in Europe using GPS-enabled elevated levels of precision and integrity. GIANT is an initiative from European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA) and Eurocontrol.

EGNOS improves the availability and integrity of GPS navigation, thus enabling suitably equipped FMS to provide horizontal and vertical navigation to Category I equivalent minimums for all users at all locations within the service area, without requiring airport-based transmitters or other supporting functionality. Additionally, EGNOS provides service for all classes of aircraft in all flight operations in its coverage, including en-route navigation, airport departures and airport arrivals. This includes CAT I equivalent approaches with minimums initially down to 250 feet in Europe

Aviation Safety Data Increased

NASA has updated its National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service, or NAOMS, website, adding more information from pilot survey responses. The data files are essentially the same files posted to the website in late 2007 and early 2008. However, the files are packaged differently and contain fewer redactions than the original postings. Therefore, they provide more information from the NAOMS aviation safety surveys. The surveys were conducted from 2001 through 2004. This release fulfills NASA's commitment to provide as much information as possible without compromising the anonymity and confidentiality promised to survey participants or the commercial confidentiality of the airlines and organizations involved. It also ensures that aviation safety researchers and the public have access to additional information that may be used to develop future models for safety systems to monitor the National Airspace System. NASA has no plans to post any additional NAOMS information after Sept. 30.