New way to find flight data New way to find flight data (October 01, 2004)

NASA Ames invents software that helps prevent accidents

By Huong C. Pham

NASA Ames has helped develop a tool to assist air safety analysts do a better job.

While the software doesn't reflect real-time activity, it is designed to provide data after a flight to prevent potential incidents or accidents from happening again, according to NASA.

"It's neat because it is designed to find things that you don't know you're looking for," said Thomas Chidester, NASA program director for Aviation Performance Measuring System at Ames. He is working with Battelle, a private contractor that helped develop the software.

A number of commercial airlines that participated in the project have installed a device called the "quick access recorder" on their airplanes, Chidester said. The recorder, which can hold data from about three days of operation time, collects information such as air speed, altitude, the temperature of the engine and the position of the landing gear.

The following morning, the airlines can download the data, thus the name "Morning Report," and display statistical results for analysts to study.

Since the software was not created to reflect real-time activity, it cannot detect immediate emergencies. Its main purpose is to collect statistical data that will allow analysts to detect trends and prevent "undesirable incidents such as making a hard landing or making an extreme steep approach where the nose of the airplane is pointed down," said Robert Lynch, project manager for Battelle.

Airlines record so much flight information that it's impossible for humans to look through it on their own, added Lynch. Before the Morning Report, an analyst was required to identify problems in advance and then use software to sift through flight data.

"With Morning Report, it will direct the attention to the area," said Lynch. "Once found, analysts can do in-depth research as to what is causing this (incident) to occur."

Although some airlines are currently using the software, "in one or two years, all the commercial airlines that are with FOQA (Flight Operational Quality Assurance) programs, will have access to the software," said Chidester.

But older airplanes that are soon to be obsolete, such as the Boeing 727, will not benefit from the software because the plane was not built to collect data digitally, added Lynch.

E-mail Huong C. Pham at hpham@mv-voice.com

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