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