Flying High, Flying Safe

Daily automated study of black box data has been made mandatory for aircraft
safety. However, it will be a while before this regulation is adopted
religiously

Old black boxes with fewer parameters than necessary, high investments and a
lack of solid state recorders…these are some of the factors that have stopped
airline companies from conducting automated analysis of black box data on a
daily basis. This analysis is vital for aircraft safety. Way back in 1998, the
director general of civil aviation (DGCA) made it mandatory for airline
companies to conducted automated analysis of black box data on a daily basis.
The non-compliance is despite the availability of newer avionics software that
can record and log thousands of engineering parameters.

Many airline companies including the Indian Airlines, Air India and private
airlines have planes that are over 15 years old. And each black box contains
data that is six months old and often useless. "All black box data is
stored on magnetic tape and the quality of this data is inferior to that from
solid state recorders. A huge volume of technical parameters can be recorded for
analysis using automated software but older black boxes record as few as 35 to
50 parameters, thereby rendering automated analysis useless," says Binu
Jacob, CEO of Dimensions Cybertech, a company that has developed a solution for
automated analysis of data in aircraft.

Black boxes were conventionally used to carry out postmortems after a crash.
Now, the DGCA has made daily analysis of block box data mandatory. This would
check several parameters and detect the flights’ deviation from the normal.
"India has one of the most stringent aviation safety laws in the world.
However. its enforcement may take more time as airlines retire their old fleet
and buy or lease newer airplanes that would be compatible with existing
software," says C Jayachandran, executive director of Trident Avionics, UAE.

Dimensions has developed two software programs: Software Analysis of Flight
Exceedance (SAFE) and RATE for easy analysis of black box data in association
with Trident Avionics of Fujairah, UAE, which is providing the hardware support.
Standard software available from black box manufacturers gives a line by line
replay of recorded data but inferring useful information from this huge amount
of data becomes a tedious process. Moreover, such software is also not
customized for different types of aircraft (Boeing 747, Airbus 320 etc).

Both SAFE and RATE are being used by Jet Airways. Using SAFE, an airline can
download data from the flight data recorder (FDR) after a few hours of flying to
analyze the values of each engineering parameter. Few of the parameters include
speed of each engine, exhaust gas temperature, take off pitch, air speed etc. In
the last two years, SAFE has successfully detected abnormalities like high
exhaust gas temperature during engine start up, low flap setting during take off
and high rate of descent among others. SAFE keeps a history of all data files
analyzed and events detected. An interface for SAFE with flight simulator
software is being developed. With this, the user will be able to visualize in
3-D animation, past events by flight path reconstruction, cockpit instrument
displays, take off and landing among many others. It also enables the cabin crew
to know the path deviation during important stages of a flight.

The RATE software assists the airline operator in monitoring performance of
the aircraft and its crew. The data related to the condition of the engine,
airplane components and the actions of the crew is read from the black box and
analyzed. This overall monitoring helps in improving maintenance of the planes
and training standards of the crew. Jet Airways has leased aircraft, the
variable costs of which depend on how the planes are operated. For example, the
amount payable as leased charges depends on the block time of flight, time in
air and take off thrust levels. The airline used to earlier depend on the
manually recorded readings of the parameters to assess the health and
performance of the aircraft. Now it is done electronically using the customized
RATE software that is now being validated by Jet Airways. The next generation of
automated black box analysis would be done in real time using artificial
intelligence. The airline crew would be alerted about lurking danger and would
be able to make necessary corrections. This would however require huge
investments in satellite communications and software systems by airline
companies.

R Sreekumar

CNS