Measuring the effects of human performance on safety, environmental and economic outputs using Flight Data Monitoring

The airline industry is highly competitive, with high CO2 emissions and a continuous need to minimise accident risks. Innovations are needed to bring economic and environmental improvements and help maintain and improve safety still further. This establishment project will attempt to lay the foundations for a later research project, which will investigate the effects of human pilot performance on measurable aspects of safety, productivity and the environment. The ultimate aim of the main project will be to quantify the effects of pilot age, experience, fatigue and use of autopilot on outputs such as fuel use, component wear and tear, and reaction time in certain flight situations. The project will be innovative in its coupling of measurable pilot data (age, flying hours, software-based fatigue predictions) to operational outpoints (e.g. landing approach stability, fuel use) measured using flight data monitoring (FDM) data based on millions of flying hours. The establishement project will pave the way for the main project through a preliminary assessment of the links between fatigue and operational flight data; and (ii) engaging support for the project with key industrial actors and other relevant projects.

The airline industry is highly competitive, with high CO2 emissions and a continuous need to minimise accident risks -- innovations are needed to bring economic and environmental improvements and help maintain and improve safety still further. The current application aims to establish a main project that will attempt to track the effect of factors influencing the collective performance of pilots using existing flight data monitoring (FDM) systems. The aim is to assess using operational data the effects that factors influencing pilot performance (e.g. fatigue, age, experience, use of autopilot) have on economic (e.g. component lifetimes), environmental (e.g. fuel use) and safety (e.g. runway approach stability) oputputs. This will pave the way for continuous monitoring of critical factors influencing pilot performance, so that those factors may be optimised (e.g. roster design, Flight Time Limitations). The project could provide airlines and regulators with a way to manage and optimize pilot performance, to the potential benefit of productivity, public safety and the wider environment. The establishment project will: (i) establish the potential of FDM data to characterise variations in human performance (e.g. initial hypothesis development and testing; establish effect sizes); (ii) engage the participation of industry actors (operators, authorities, flight service providers, unions, industry associations) and relevant ongoing projects. The main R&D challenges in the establishment phase wil be considering the full range of possiblities open to us in the development of a FDM parameter set, and identifying any relevant confounding variables when testing hypotheses. These challenges will fully explored and addressed during a site visit to the data service provider. Cooperation of operators and other key stakeholders, and achieving full synergy with ongoing projects will be addressed during calls and workshop activities.