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Abstract. The purpose of this study was to examine how pilots respond to conflicting information on the flight deck. In this study, 108 airline, corporate, and general aviation pilots completed an online questionnaire reporting weather, traffic, and navigation information conflicts experienced on the flight deck, including which information sources they trusted and acted on. Results indicated that weather information conflicts are most commonly experienced, and typically between a certified source in the panel and an uncertified electronic flight bag application. Most participants (a) trusted certified systems due to their accuracy, reliability, recency, and knowledge about the source, and (2) acted on the certified system due to trust, being trained and required to use it, and its indicating a more hazardous situation.

Many pilots utilize portable electronic flight bags (EFB) as supplemental sources of information on the flight deck. Because EFB applications often obtain data from different sources than the certi...

The concept of a factor model based on frames is proposed. Factors are considered as slot values of the corresponding frames, which makes it possible to reduce the complexity of the developed model. The method for calculating the factor values by searching for the eigenvalues of the pairwise comparison matrices of the extent of the slots’ influence is proposed. A procedure allowing us to see the spread of the influence of factors along all possible paths of the influence graph is developed. As a result of the calculations, the most influential factors on the efficiency of the entire modeled system are determined. It is shown that it is possible to use the factor model for estimating the activity of innovative enterprises and for selecting an electronic flight bag (EFB) for the crew. This model can be used to forecast the development of complex dynamic systems with feedback, as well as for evaluating and making management decisions on the innovative activity of enterprises under conditions of weakly structured information.

Abstract. Aeronautical decision-making on the flight deck requires pilots to reconcile and make decisions using information from a range of different sources, sometimes with limited knowledge of associated levels of accuracy, integrity, and reliability. A review of four aviation safety databases identified information discrepancies experienced by general aviation and airline pilots. The analysis captured current trends in (a) the information discrepancies that pilots experience on the flight deck, (b) how pilots are responding, and (c) what are the resulting performance and safety impacts. Research implications and future research suggestions are also discussed.

The paper considers application of an ontological approach to development and implementation of Electronic Flight Bag information systems (EFB). An ontology of EFB systems’ subject area with description of a conceptual model of EFB software application for take-off and landing characteristics calculations of aircraft has been developed. The ontology was formalized using Protégé software.

The purpose of this study was to gather usability data on a new flight deck concept in which pilots are shown certified and uncertified information concurrently on installed avionics. Specifically, we wanted to examine perceptions on the concepts of concurrent use and differentiation for electronic flight bag (EFB) applications that show ownship position. We presented an uncertified electronic chart on either a portable electronic device (PED) alone (off to the pilot’s side) or on both a PED and an installed flight deck display. The uncertified electronic chart was always shown concurrently with an approved navigation source. We differentiated the electronic chart from the navigation information via display medium (portable vs. installed) and a header labeled “EFB,” drawn at the top of the uncertified electronic chart on the installed display. Thirteen flightcrews flew eight scenarios using the flight deck concept. Pilots liked the concurrent display of the electronic chart, and the repeated display functionality, in particular, because they could control the presentation of information on the forward display using the touch screen on the side display. Our method of differentiation—a header—was less successful and suggests a need to consider the potential for stimulus habituation when evaluating these techniques.

Digital Copilot is a prototype information system providing cognitive assistance to pilots in general aviation. This paper presents the methods and results of an analysis quantifying the expected s...

The COVID-19 pandemic limited hospital resources and necessitated interhospital transport of ICU-patients in order to provide critical care to all patients in the Netherlands. However, not all hospitals have an approved landing site. The ICU-transport operation was executed under HEMS-license and landing on non-aerodrome terrain was permitted. This allowed the search for an ad-hoc landing site in the direct vicinity of the ICU. The following characteristics were judged: slope, obstacles, size, soil conditions and the presence of foreign objects. Before the start of this transport operation, in two days, all hospitals in the Netherlands were visited and presumed landing sites explored, described, photographed and recorded in the electronic flight bag. At 71 (87,6 %) of the hospitals it was possible to install a temporary approved landing site in the direct vicinity of the ICU. 110 landings were made on these landing sites and 114 landings on approved heliports. Only 11 patients required secondary transport to or from the helicopter landings site. This occurred only in two patients from a heliport to a receiving hospital. The construction of pre-explored approved landing sites in the vicinity of hospitals allows safe transportation of patients by helicopter to hospitals without a heliport. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13049-021-00894-2.

Предложено использование принципов экспертной системы для выполнения автоматизированного расчета параметров взлета и посадки воздушных судов отечественного производства на базе программного приложения для электронного полетного планшета. Разработан прототип программного обеспечения на примере воздушного судна Ту-204.

В реализации программного приложения для определения рациональных взлетно-посадочных характеристик воздушных судов российского производства предложены принципы экспертной системы. Разработана модульная архитектура процесса определения параметров взлета и посадки в рассматриваемой системе. Разработан прототип клиент-серверного программного приложения для электронного полетного планшета на примере конкретного типа российского воздушного судна.

Для автоматизированного определения рациональных взлетно-посадочных характеристик воздушных судов предложено использование принципов экспертной системы, основанной на правилах. Предложена архитектура процесса расчета взлетно-посадочных характеристик. Показана разработка прототипа программного приложения на примере воздушного судна семейства Ту-204. Выполнена оцифровка номограммам зависимостей взлетно-посадочных характеристик воздушного судна. По оцифрованным номограммам построены математические модели зависимостей взлетно-посадочных характеристик для автоматизации расчета параметров взлета и посадки воздушного судна

Paper documentation has been used in the flight deck for a long time on commercial aircraft. Pilots are familiar with tons of manuals to search information during flight to help them perform procedures to ensure safety, efficiency and comfort on commercial aircrafts. Management of interconnections among these flight manuals can be a challenge for pilots, especially when time workload is high in normal, abnormal, and emergency situations. This paper is an overview on the development from paper documentation moving to Onboard Information System (OIS), which fulfills the function of an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) system. Today the EFB or OIS does not simply provide electronic documentation onboard, it could be a multi-function device interacting with other systems and pilots in the flight deck. This overview also discusses the significance of contextual information on OIS facilitates access to appropriate operational content at the right time through case study. Tangible Cockpit (i.e., Full-Glass Cockpit) could be a trend of flight deck design in the near future, which is easy to use, update, and maintenance. However, it may bring new problems during flight operations.

Electronic flight bags (EFB’s) have become common in the era of technologically advanced aircraft (TAA) and glass cockpits. However, many pilots still rely on paper charts as backups in case of electronic failures. The purpose of this study was to examine pilot performance differences when using electronic and paper instrument approach charts. Twenty-nine participants from a large university completed the study in a fixed-based flight-training device (FTD). While completing a flight between two major cities, the participants were asked to answer questions on instrument approach charts using an electronic flight bag. Halfway through the questions, the electronic flight bag was said to have failed, and participants were provided with paper charts. The findings indicate that participants’ response time was significantly lower using electronic charts over paper ones. Flight performance, as observed via video footage, indicated far worse control of altitude and course when using paper charts than when electronic charts were used. In a post-test instrument, participants’ poorly estimated the their average response time to questions in both conditions. Finally, participants’ indicated that they felt the use of electronic charts reduced their workload as measured by the NASA TLX. The paper discusses the practical applications of these findings.

Keselamatan penerbangan adalah suatu keadaan terpenuhinya persyaratan keselamatan dalam pemanfaatan wilayah udara, pesawat udara, Bandar udara, angkutan udara, navigasi penerbangan, serta fasilitas penunjang dan fasilitas umum lainnya. Untuk menunjang keselamatan penerbangan dibutuhkan teknologi yang efektif dan efisien agar dapat mempengaruhi keselamatan penerbangan. Dalam penelitian ini peneliti memilih electronic flight bag untuk menjadi sistem yang digunakan untuk menunjang keselamatan penerbangan. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah menganalisis pengaruh Efektivitas penggunaan electronic flight bag terhadap Keselamatan Penerbangan PT. Garuda Indonesia. Desain penelitian menggunakan pendekatan Deskriptif Kuantitatif. Data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini berasal dari data primer yang diperoleh berdasarkan penyebaran Kuesioner yang dibagikan kepada sample penelitian yaitu sebanyak 30 orang seluruh pilot PT. Garuda Indonesia dengan tipe pesawat B777-300R dengan teknik analisis data Regresi Linear Sederhana. Hasil penelitian ini adalah menunjukan Efektivitas penggunaan electronic flight bag berpegaruh positif dan signifikan terhadap keselamatan penerbangan sebesar 18,5%. Efektivitas kegunaan electronic flight bag PT. Garuda Indonesia sebesar 0,396 dalam hal ini dapat diartikan bahwa terdapat hubungan yang positif. Nilai koefisien korelasi momen sebesar 0,431 antara variabel efektivitas EFB dengan variabel keselamatan penerbangan dapat dikatakan sedang. Dan terdapat 0,017 tingkat signifikasi dapat membuktikan tingkat signifikasi tersebut dibawah 0,05 pada arah positif jadi terdapat hubungan antara efektivitas EFB dengan keselamatan penerbangan. Maka hasil dari penelitian ini H0 ditolakdan Ha diterima. Penggunaan electronic flight bag terhadap keselamatan penerbangan berpengaruh rendah.

Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) is a sophisticated technology which is aimed to be used in paperless flight operation in the airplane. Using of EFB is mainly planning to increase the efficiency of the aviation companies. In the scope of this research, the procedures of EFB usage in the flight operations and the advantages to airline companies are investigated. In the first part of the paper, the concept of efficiency is determined and requirements of flight operations planning procedures are investigated with literature review. In the second part, electronic flight bag is defined with the properties, types, services, and usage conditions. In the last part, the efficiency of EFB usage is estimated with the data which is collected by semi-structured interview method. The research was completed with 6 different participations from different airlines companies in Turkey. In the result of the paper, time-saving in data updating process is found to be one of the several advantages of EFB. Moreover, with the help of accelerated information process, companies may save more time with faster aircraft turnaround.

Foundations of rule based expert systems are applied in development of an electronic flight bag software application for aircraft takeoff and landing performance calculations. The architecture of the expert system software is developed. Development of the system is carried out for aircraft Tu-204.

Paper checklists are being replaced by software on a tablet computer, i.e., an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB). We focus on what effects this can have on the human pilot and on safety and security. We define practical EFB modifications, implementable in an app, to improve trustworthiness, especially for general aviation (GA).

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Next Generation (NextGen) Weather Technology in the Cockpit (WTIC) program is sponsoring an operational demonstration to evaluate the feasibility to uplink convective storm products to commercial aircraft flying routes over remote and oceanic regions for display on an electronic flight bag (EFB). The effort, called the Remote Oceanic Meteorology Information Operational (ROMIO) demonstration, is a collaborative effort between the FAA, the weather research community, the airlines, and airlines inflight entertainment communications (IFEC) providers. The ROMIO Demonstration project will develop and demonstrate operational strategies for the use of rapidly updated Cloud Top Height (CTH) and Convective Diagnosis Oceanic (CDO) products on the flight deck, in the Oceanic Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) and as part of Airline Operations Center (AOC) flight dispatch operations. Participating airlines include Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines. The domain for storm product creation is contained by the scanning area of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-East and GOES-West satellites. Routes to be flown are between the continental United States (CONUS) and South America, Caribbean, Australia, and South Africa, among others. A select number of airline line check pilots will participate in the demonstration. The ROMIO demonstration will begin in spring of 2018 and continue for approximately 9 months. During the demonstration, feedback from pilots, AOC dispatchers and Oceanic ARTCC controllers will be solicited to ascertain the benefits associated with providing near real-time, rapidly updated graphical information on convective structure.

Full autonomy seems to be the goal for system developers in almost every area of the economy. However, as we move from automated systems to autonomous systems, designers have needed to insert humans to oversee automation that has traditionally been brittle or incomplete. This creates its own problems as the operator is usually out of the loop when the automation hands over problems that it cannot handle. To better handle these situations, it has been proposed that we develop human automation teams that have shared goals and objectives to support task performance. This paper first summarizes a body of research to develop ground station automation support for single pilot transport operations. Then the paper will describe an initial model of Human Automation Teaming (HAT) which has three elements: transparency, bi-directional communications, and human-directed execution. Transparency in our model is a method for giving insight into the reasoning behind automated recommendations and actions, bi-directional communication allows the operator to communicate directly with the automation, and finally the automation defers execution to the human. The model was implemented through a number of features on an electronic flight bag (EFB) which are described in the paper. The EFB was installed in a mid-fidelity flight simulator and used by 12 airline pilots to support diversion decisions during off-nominal flight scenarios. Pilots reported that working with the HAT automation made diversion decisions easier and reduced their workload. They also reported that the information provided about diversion airports was similar to what they would receive from ground dispatch, thus making coordination with dispatch easier and less time consuming. These HAT features engender more trust in the automation when appropriate, and less when not, allowing improved supervision of automated functions by flight crews.

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This paper describes the development of a concept to guide a transport type aircraft on a continuous descent while meeting a required time of arrival at a metering fix with an error of less than 10 seconds. This includes the development of the basic principle as well as a simulator study with three pilots. Following the improvement of the simulation model and the guidance algorithm a flight test campaign confirmed the performance of the implemented prototype and the acceptance of the concept by the pilots that was already seen after the simulator study. The development of the concept as well as the simulator campaign was done in the frame of the Clean Sky project sponsored by the European Commission. After promising results from the simulator campaign the work was continued as DLR internal project and the flight test results were made available to the Clean Sky consortium.

The Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) provides pilots real-time or existing data by converting the papery documents into electronic books. Consequently the efficiency and the security have been improved, which reduce pilots’ ground communication time and the paperweight. As a key factor of what influences the takeoff process, the takeoff performance undoubtedly has been an essential research task of EFB, while many factors may affect the takeoff performance, such as flap position, anti-ice and the external temperature. By means of interpolation, this paper integrates those factors and gets Maximum Take-off Weight (TOW), Take-off Decision Speed (V1), Take-off Rotation Speed (VR) and Take-off Safety Speed (V2). And then implants the result into the EFB based on the iOS.

An application for entering a taxiroute into an Electronic Flight Bag, using either speech input or manual input, has been investigated. The input concepts are designed such that the number of actions to be performed when using speech input is the same as when using manual input. A previous evaluation of the speech input concept in an undisturbed, single-task environment showed that high route recognition performance is feasible. To compare the concepts in an operationally realistic environment, two experiments were conducted in a fixed-base research simulator. Typical disturbances that are present in the cockpit environment were modeled and used in this simulation-based evaluation/comparison. Time, efficiency, workload, and pilot preference were used as criteria. Eight professional pilots, with flight experience varying from 9 to 27 years, participated. The results indicate a clear performance benefit in terms of speed and efficiency for the manual input, which also yielded a lower workload and was the preferred option of the pilots.

Kontinuierliche Sinkflugprofile (Continuous Descent Approach – CDA) versprechen sowohl eine Treibstoff- und Emissionsreduzierung über den gesamten Anflug als auch eine Lärmreduzierung besonders im unteren Teil des Anfluges. Diese Einsparungen lassen sich jedoch nur realisieren, wenn nach dem Beginn der Sinkflugphase keine Änderungen an der Streckenlänge oder am Höhenprofil, zum Beispiel durch Anweisungen der Flugsicherung, mehr notwendig sind. Diese Einschränkung führt dazu, dass solche lärmarmen Anflüge hauptsächlich in Situationen mit geringem Verkehrsaufkommen durchgeführt werden. Verschiedene Studien haben jedoch gezeigt, dass sich CDAs auch in dichten Verkehrssituationen durchführen lassen, wenn die notwendige Staffelung durch vorher festgelegte Ankunftszeiten festgelegt und während des gesamten Anfluges vom Luftfahrzeug kontrolliert und eingehalten wird. Die dafür notwendigen Algorithmen und Systeme befinden sich bereits in der Entwicklung, werden aber aufgrund der langen Entwicklungszyklen in der Luftfahrt erst in mehreren Jahren im Cockpit zur Verfügung stehen. Um eine zeitgenaue Flugführung auch mit den heute verfügbaren Systemen zu realisieren ist im Rahmen des EU Projektes Clean Sky eine Flugführungsanzeige auf einem iPad entwickelt worden die dem Piloten Zielwerte für den Autopiloten anzeigt, so dass das Luftfahrzeug örtlich und zeitlich präzise dem vorher vereinbarten Flugprofil folgen kann. Im Rahmen des Projektes wurden bereits erste Versuche mit Piloten im Simulator zur grundsätzlichen Akzeptanz und Leistung des Systems durchgeführt. Weitere Versuche im Simulator und im Flugversuch sind in 2015 geplant.

For years, paper-based navigation aids have been an integral part of safely operating an aircraft. While these tools have served their purpose well, the technology to replace them with a more productive and efficient device may have arrived. Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs) have quickly become popular for both commercial and private use. This study analyzed the effect EFBs have on pilot performance in a single pilot environment by evaluating the performance of instrument rated pilots at a large southeastern flight school. The participants (N=14) were asked to complete two instrument approaches in a flight training device. One approach was executed using an Apple iPad® equipped with ForeFlight™ software (the EFB), while paper charts were utilized during the other approach. Deviations in altitude, heading, airspeed, and localizer course from instrument pilot practical test standards were recorded, as was the time taken for each participant to configure the approach. Statistical analysis was conducted to determine if a difference existed between the two methods. The results showed a statistically significant increase in every analyzed performance metric when using the EFB. A survey of participants’ perceived workload during the approaches was also conducted, which revealed participants felt using the EFB decreased their workload.

During taxiing, an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) showing airport and route-data can support pilots. In the present study, the possibility of using a Voice Recognition System (VRS) to enable pilots to enter route instructions, for usage in situations where digital data link is not available, was investigated. The potential of techniques that utilize information on airport layout to detect and correct voice recognition errors was explored. Experiment I investigated the accuracy rates that can be achieved with the basic VRS. Although high, the resulting accuracy was insufficient, for safety reasons as well as user-acceptance of the system. A configurable system that interprets user utterances based on possible taxi routes on the airport, was designed and implemented. Experiment II explored the potential improvement of the different configuration options on error detection and correction performance. With one of the configurations, an increase of 42% in overall recognition rates was achieved.

This paper reports on the application of a range of human computer interaction (HCI) methods to the re-design of an electronic flight bag (EFB), as part of a commercial software development project. Specifically, it focusses on the use of participatory design methods, for resolving EFB usability problems. The purpose of this case study is to: (a) Show how participatory design methods can be effectively combined with ethnographic techniques and more formal methods in HCI, for the development of human-friendly EFB systems, (b) Illuminate the specific EFB usability issues encountered in this research and related HCI solutions, (c) Generate an awareness of the challenges faced by HCI practitioners adapting HCI methods to meet commercial project constraints. The HCI methodology outlined in this case study may be of interest to practitioners tasked with process and technology envisionment and/or working with limited resources.