April 9, 2024 • 27 mins
Akbar Sultan, Director of NASA's Airspace Operations and Safety Program joins ALPA President, Capt. Jason Ambrosi for a conversation about the latest advances in aviation safety research for a behind-the-scenes look at how researchers and pilots are collaborating to strengthen aviation safety. Their discussion covers Airspace Operations and Safety Program’s work to develop predictive safety systems using flight data to identify risks before pilots encounter them, optimizing schedules to prevent fatigue, and how to integrate automation to supplement the work of pilots.
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Episode Transcript
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Jason Ambrosi (00:04):
Welcome to the Air Line Pilot Podcast. I'm
Jason Ambrosi. As the largestnon governmental aviation safety
organization, ALPA keeps closeties to our partners in safety
across the industry. Today we'rejoined by one of those partners,
Akbar Sultan, the director ofNASA, airspace operations and
safety program. This programplays a key role in researching
(00:28):
and identifying safety threatsand opportunities. Thank you for
joining us, Akbar.
Akbar Sultan (00:33):
Thank you, Captain Ambrosi, for having us today
here.
Jason Ambrosi (00:35):
Absolutely. Before we jump into the meat and
potatoes, I'll say I come fromlargely the industrial side of
ALPA. However, our roots are insafety since our beginning in
1931. And it's been great seeingfirsthand the incredible work
our volunteers and staff do Onthe safety front every day. And
I'm excited to communicate theseefforts on behalf of our
(00:57):
listeners. So NASA and FAA havebeen great partners for decades
and mitigating risk in aviationthrough the commercial aviation
safety team or cast. Would yougive our listeners a bit of
background on the work and someof the developments and
processes NASA has helped tobuild?
Akbar Sultan (01:15):
Certainly, so first of all, um, you know, NASA
has a very long and rich historyin aviation. I mean, we go back
to 1915, when there was a for itoriginally, NACA was established
the National Advisory Counciland aeronautics. And you go in
what we say today is, NASA is inthe DNA of aviation. So when you
(01:38):
fly, whether it's a ground basedsystem, or an avionics system or
an aircraft, you know, system orengine, you won't necessarily
see a NASA logo on something.But if we've had our our hands
on it, somewhere down the line,as aviation has evolved. So for
example, if we look at some ofthe big advancements in the for
(02:00):
example, in the 1970s, we helpedpromote, and spearhead Crew
Resource Management, which had abig change on how we fly
aircraft today, and how we makedecisions in the cockpit. In the
1980s, we helped develop theenhanced vision systems and
(02:25):
synthetic visions and foroperations in low visibility
conditions. And of course, as welook, you know, closer in more
recently, after the unfortunateColgan air accident, we actually
led six safety enhancementsunder the commercial aviation
(02:47):
safety team for prevention ofstall in helping with Upset
Recovery, which essentially wasif you look at the simulators,
that were used for stallrecovery operations, the earlier
models were very much linearmodels, which said you know, the
plane is flying steady, and thenthere is an issue it says your
(03:11):
installed but however, thesimulator was so perfectly
flyable it did not have thatmushy feel, or the controls were
for example, not reversed, itcould not emulate a proper style
properly. So we enhance thosealgorithms. So that now a pilot
can truly experience in thesimulated environment, what it
feels like, such that when youknow, should they unfortunately
(03:34):
have that encounter, they have abetter muscle memory on how to
react to it. So that technologyhas been now transferred to all
the aviation community for us,as well as being able to enhance
the algorithms to train them forUpset Recovery conditions. I am
for example, I used to sail longtime ago. And if you're a
(03:54):
sailor, you can know thatsometimes you you stall your
rudder, right? You need toreverse the rudders in order to
reattach the flow. And that samething happens with absolute
recovery conditions. So, theseare some of the main things that
we have helped develop. And ifyou look at CAST, you know, it
was formed in the 90s. In in, inthe in that same timeframe. NASA
(04:18):
led the effort to show thatusing data analytics, you can
try to go into more proactivesafety environment to be able to
identify some things, precursorsto accidents or incidents, or to
identify trends. And thatcapability very much resulted in
the creation of Assayas in theearly 2000s. So as you can see,
(04:42):
you know, we we don'tnecessarily have an ownership of
something. However, as aviationhas evolved, we've had
significant contributionsthroughout certain timeframes.
Jason Ambrosi (04:55):
Yeah, that's that's incredible. And it's it's
it's It's amazing to see thework that so many different
organizations do together tokeep that level of safety
getting better, right? If at anypoint in our history, we said,
Okay, we're safe enough now, asthe system get bigger and
bigger, there'd be you know,numbers of, of accidents, that
(05:17):
would be never acceptable. Sothe fact that your organization
organization, so many otherorganizations strive to have an
increased level of safety, andeven now that we're in the
safest period in history, keeppushing that that bar higher and
push that bar forward. But sowhat are you working on, or
researching now to mitigaterisk?
Akbar Sultan (05:38):
So our primary focus right now is on this
concept called an entireAviation Safety Management
System, which is, how do you gofrom the current environment of
our reactive and proactiveenvironment to a more predictive
environment? And using dataanalytics, and automation to do
(05:59):
monitor alert and mitigation ofsafety events and looking for us
precursors? So that's in theearly stages of the research
that we're currently kind ofdoing a lot of work on
Jason Ambrosi (06:11):
the notice at work? What what did you just
explain that a little more, if
Akbar Sultan (06:15):
you don't mind? Certainly. So for example, you
know, I might give one exampleis is looking at Mr approaches.
So for example, if using dataanalytics, and everything that's
ongoing on in the flight datarecorder, and using those
telemetry data, and looking atthe state of the NASS in their
(06:38):
region, and looking at what allthe other aircraft have done,
winds, whether the state of thepilot, how many hours they have
had on onboard, and, you know,what is their state of
alertness, everything elsethat's going on. So a tremendous
amount of data analytics can beat play. And being able to look
at that and the aircraft stateand say, before the pilots are
(07:00):
able to actually make a decisionfor a go, no, go on a go around,
having the algorithm be able tosay, you know, almost 30
seconds, and sometimes up to aminute before stating that,
given the current aircraftstate, and the approach path,
and everything else that's goingon in an ass, you know, maybe
you should do a go around atthis higher altitude, higher
(07:21):
energy state. So this is kind oflike an algorithm that we've
been able to research in the labenvironment, of course, but this
is something that can haveapplication in the real world.
So this is now getting into thatmore predictive automation
environment, being able toassist the crew in in being able
(07:42):
to essentially have automation,you know, do this human machine
or automation teaming. Becauseat the end of the day, you human
is fully responsible for thevehicle safety. So how do we add
additional enhancements andcapability for that decision
making?
Jason Ambrosi (07:59):
Identify the risk earlier I see is what it sounds
like. What other trends have youas your office recently
identified or, or areas in whichwe we could do something to
improve, improve safety beyondwhere we are today?
Akbar Sultan (08:12):
That we've looked at a couple of things. So first,
of course, you know, runwayincursions, and in wrong surface
approaches, and those things, Iknow have been making a lot of
headline news. We know NASA hasdeveloped a capability that
using ATSB, in whichunfortunately is not widely
(08:34):
deployed, right. But if aircraftthat are ATSB, in equipped, you
could provide the crew someadditional alerts and
information in the cockpit, bothfor aircraft on the ground as
well as on the approach in orderto be able to avoid runway
(08:55):
incursions, or wrong surfaceapproaches. This is a capability
that one can look at it from twosides. One is say, you know, of
course, it enhances safety. Butfrom the other perspective, I
know where the airlines inhaving to equip, there's always
that first question they alwaysask, right? Well, you have this
(09:15):
new technology dsbn Why should Iinvest in it? So this way, we
are able to now say that, okay,if if you were to invest in this
technology, now, this is areward that perhaps you could,
you could get out of thatequipage so that's a return on
investment. So that's, that'sone of the things for example,
(09:36):
that we've been looking at. Thatseems
Jason Ambrosi (09:38):
like a simple one. If I might not say so II
ADSB. And that it's just seemslike common sense because it
gives you more situationalawareness as a pilot.
Situational Awareness is is it'sgreat. So just like you said,
runway incursions or you know,wrong, wrong approaches. Just
having that situationalawareness. It seems like a no
brainer that that would be aninvestment that that Errol lines
(10:00):
and industry would want to make.
Akbar Sultan (10:02):
Absolutely. But as you can see, I mean, you're a
pilot, there's a huge cost andairlines are they're not the
high margin endeavors. So thisis where what we tried to do is
we just because of that, we tryto create capabilities in
(10:23):
technologies that can piggybackoff of tech investments, such as
at ESPN. So this way, forexample, we can say like, Okay,
if you do invest in ESPN, whatadditional capability
enhancement could I provide you?So the safety is an example.
We've developed a couple ofadditional tools, for example,
(10:45):
to reduce noise emissions andfuel that's actually in
demonstrations out in Dallas,Fort Worth, and Dallas love
field with a few airlines thatare saving tremendous amount of
fuel, for example, with what afew of our airline partners out
there.
Jason Ambrosi (10:59):
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's great. Going way
back, NASA's ASR is AviationSafety Reporting System, and you
know, other confidential safetyreporting systems like ASAP,
when, okay, at the airline levelthat most airlines have, have
implemented our vital tools inunderstanding the trends of
(11:20):
safety? How does NASA and othergroups utilize this information
provided by you know, actualline pilots out there in this
environment? And when what valuedoes that contribute to the, to
the research projects?
Akbar Sultan (11:33):
So, so first of all, you know, if we look at
some systems, such as ASRS, it'sa lack of better word, it's a
wealth of information, where youcan get almost like approaching
almost 1000 reports a month, forexample, that that are received
within that system. And ofcourse, you can also even
(11:53):
supplemented with as a science,which has additional information
on data fusion, for example, aswell. And you heard me talk a
little bit, you know, a fewmoments ago, talk about
automation, using automation tohelp monitor or alert and
mitigate potential safetyhazard. So for these algorithms,
(12:14):
they need a lot of data, inorder to sort of normalize to
say, what is a safe event? Andhow do you now look for that
outlier. So in order to in orderto make sure that we are able to
detect that potential outliercorrectly, because at the end of
the day, you don't want to havetoo many false positives, right?
(12:36):
False negatives, I'm sorry. Soso so this is where, where this
tremendous amount of data isextremely crucial for us, we're
able to use that data and mineit and then help train the
algorithms to make sure thatwe're not missing anything. So
those are like the falsenegatives that you perhaps you
(12:57):
missed, something that youshould have flagged. And or
we're not having too many falsepositives, where we flagging a
lot of things that should not beflagged. Because at the end of
the day, you want the humanthat's using the system to have
trust in the system. Now, if youhave false positives and
negatives, that trust, ofcourse, is lost on automation.
And that's the worst situationone can have in a knavish
(13:19):
environment where the the humanand machine that connect
connectivity is now for example,has been compromised.
Jason Ambrosi (13:27):
That's interesting. You know, we talk
about the line pilotsperspective, what what is the
important of the line pilotperspective from you know, our
ALPA representatives, and whenwe work with government or or
industry workgroups like yours.
Akbar Sultan (13:41):
So, you know, to put it simply, line pilots are
domain experts. You all know asto why something should be done
the way it is, or why somethinghappened the way it happened.
And having that crucialinformation is tremendous. And
(14:03):
also, at the end of the day,what technology needs to be
developed to be helpful to you.Because if NASA develops our
technologies, and we do it in avacuum, we will maybe develop a
very wonderful tool that worksperfectly fine in a lab
environment. However, perhaps itis not implementable and
(14:24):
deployable because it's, it'sgoing to be arduous to deploy in
a real world environment. Sothat's why we try to engage with
the end users as early in theresearch phase as possible. We
actually try to engage with ourusers almost at TRL, one at very
low maturity levels. So that wemay have a concept, but how do
(14:46):
we shape the concept such thatat the end of the day, it's
useful to the to the to the tothe to the actual deployed
entity, and also get thatfeedback to say, you know, this
is how you should perhaps evolvehaven't changed the concept. And
this is what's usefulinformation for me. You know,
going back to what I said amoment ago in terms of those
(15:07):
eight data and data analytics,you know, providing additional
data to a user is notnecessarily helpful because at
the end of the day data is notnecessarily information. Data
needs to be translated in a formthat is useful and digestible by
the end user. And this is thetremendous feedback we get from
the from the aviation community.
Jason Ambrosi (15:28):
I can say as a lion pilot, you know of doing
this now that many years offlying out there I appreciate
when when our perspective islistened to because we like you
said we're in that environmentday in and day out, day and
night. Now shifting gears alittle bit to do all the new
entrance we have so many newentrance, it's going to be a
(15:49):
clogged Naseer, before too long,how will the air transportation
system need to adapt to to keepsuch a safe operating
environment?
Akbar Sultan (15:58):
Well, aviation is changing tremendously. And with
especially with the advent ofnew entrants, because if you
look at the new entrants, it'sgoing to bring far more set of,
you know, the diversity ofoperations is going to be
higher. Because if we look atthe current aviation, it's you
(16:19):
know, Toobin wings, right, and afew rotorcraft throw in a few GA
throwing. And the modes ofsources and sink of operations
are primarily airport to airportor verta, part two of our
report. However, with newentrants, you can sort of see
that the performancecharacteristics of just these
vehicles is going to be far morediverse, you know, you could
(16:41):
have for example, if you'relooking at the Upper East
atmosphere, you could have asupersonic aircraft surance, you
know, going through an airspaceat Mach 1.5, occupied by a hail
that's going at 15 knots, right,just the diversity of the
performance. And the diversityof the missions is going to be
far higher. So of course, thatleads to you know, and also the
(17:05):
density is also going to be muchhigher in depth. You know, the
current NASS maybe is about 50,to 70,000 operations a day,
depending if you exclude orinclude the GA, we could foresee
going into an environmentthere's millions of operations,
if you start looking at the USsmall UAS, as large UAS is and
advanced Air Mobility, it's hardto believe, isn't it? Exactly.
(17:27):
So given those two things,there's going to be higher
levels of complexity. Sotherefore, we have to start
looking at our environment tosay, how do we add additional
automation to assist a human?Because if we say that the human
alone is by themselvesresponsible for the safe
(17:47):
operation of that environment, Ithink we can all agree that the
bandwidth and reaction time isgoing to be stressed for a human
operator. So therefore, how dowe introduce additional
automation to assist humans suchthat we can provide them that
predictive risk, and predictivesafety as services and
capabilities to assist them inthe safe maintenance of the
(18:09):
current aviation system? In onecan also look in terms of the
society's acceptance of, ofsafety events, where no one can
look and say, well, the UnitedStates, we have the safest
aviation in the world, you know,perhaps one can extrapolate, say
one fatality every 10 to 15years. And if we say, we're
(18:33):
going into an environment, we'regoing to have millions of
operations, one can't justextrapolate and say, Okay, we're
going to have a millionfatalities every 1015 years,
society is not going to acceptthat. So that's where as we try
to enhance the safety severalfold, that is going to be our
challenge in making sure that wehave the right capabilities and
(18:54):
technologies to be able toassist humans in that endeavor
is going to be the key.
Jason Ambrosi (18:58):
And properly integrating all these new users
into the into the airspace is isessential, right? You can't have
a drone delivering a packagewandering across the, the
approach path here at DCA orsomething like that, so that the
work has been is cut out to makesure that all the new entrants
(19:18):
are operating in a way thatkeeps everybody safe. Traveling
and shipping public.
Akbar Sultan (19:23):
Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the the main
focus areas of NASA's researchon on the new entrants and
advanced air mobility in UAS isis essentially the two focus
areas are integration into theNASS and how do we integrate
these vehicles safely with theexisting you know, operations
(19:46):
such that you know, any and allvehicles can cohabitate and
coexist harmoniously and safely.And then the second aspect is
the the safety capabilities andservices For these vehicles,
Jason Ambrosi (20:02):
so we talk about fatigue a lot with more
operations, especially comingout of the pandemic. Fatigue has
become an issue for for many ofour members, because the
airlines had a tendency to bringback flying faster than they,
they could, or maybe they someshould have, because we have the
airplanes, but less pilots,because of early retirements.
It's tough. But again, fatigueis front center. Some of the
(20:25):
research that NASA has conductedhas been is crucial to gaining
understanding on fatigue, how itimpacts pilots, and how it
impacts safety. You're currentlystudying and you're wrapping up
a fatigue research sometime thissummer. Is there any? Is there
any insight into that or any anykind of data, your team's
looking at some let us know alittle something early as I
(20:45):
guess what I'm asking? Sure.
Akbar Sultan (20:48):
So we're working with, you know, several airline
partners, both domestic andinternational, in the primary
objectives are, essentially tolook at circadian rhythms for
example, and being able toidentify, you know, the effect
of that on the pilots,alertness, and also look for
(21:14):
scheduling of the crew. Becauseno humans, no two humans are all
alike, right? We all havedifferent circadian rhythms. And
we are all you know, there'speople that are, we say they're
the morning people, afternoonpeople and late day people,
right, and some people are muchbetter in the evenings. So how
do you given the natural rhythmsand Alert States of each crew
(21:40):
member? Is there a way to beable to schedule them such that
now you're putting the crewmembers on the most optimum
scheduled given their most alertcircadian rhythms rather than
just one size fits all sayseverybody is doing red eyes?
Well, some people are better atred eyes than others. So how do
(22:00):
we how do we do that crewresourcing, we have looked at
for example, the the cockpitlighting conditions, and being
able to say, Okay, are therecertain lighting situations
better than others, for First ofall, for each individual pilot,
but also for the, you know, thethe hour of operation and the
(22:25):
duration of the flight. Andother things that we have looked
at, for example, is thedevelopment of this little tool
that we've developed. It'sessentially it's a pilot
alertness tool, PVT plus, youknow, and it's been used by
(22:45):
several airlines in the UnitedStates, where essentially, it's,
it's this iPhone app based toolthat one can enter your, you
know, your your sleep cycleinformation, but also do a
little test. And it immediatelyprovides information back to
say, Okay, what is the state ofalertness for the individual,
(23:07):
such that the individuals andairlines can make better
informed decisions? So these aresome some things that have been
studied through this study thatyou mentioned. But of course,
you know, human fatigue andhuman factors is going to be an
ongoing work. So even though thecurrent study will wrap up
shortly, we wouldn't tend to becarrying on our investment there
(23:31):
going forward for otherpurposes.
Jason Ambrosi (23:34):
Speaking of human factors, can you speak to how
human factors and how theresiliency of of pilots humans
contribute to the safety offlight operations?
Akbar Sultan (23:46):
Certainly. So here, I would like to quote one
of our, you know, colleagues,Kim Pyle from FAS abs, she's
been using these words quite abit in terms of the humans have
the three C's, you know,curiosity, creativity and
compassion. And, and that issomething that automation does
(24:10):
not have in at the end of theday, it's those, you know, among
many others, but those at leastthose three traits that human
provides, always leads to oursafer, you know, Operation
environment for for aviation.And this is, you know, one can
(24:30):
also look at, you know, how dowe use the human contributions
to safety, and what are what iseach pilot doing on a daily
basis? That's leading to thesafe operation of the NASS and
and how do we use the inherentability of a human to be able to
(24:53):
contribute to safety and do theappropriate human machine
teaming? Because if you provideAdding additional information
and assistance throughautomation, want to make sure
that we avoid mode confusions,right? Or any other things. And
one of the things that, forexample, I would even go as far
as to say is perhaps a misnomeris when somebody says, Oh, this
(25:19):
was due to human error. And inno, I would kind of strongly
suggest that nobody wakes up inthe morning and says, I'm going
to go to work today, no matterwhat they do, and no matter what
line of work, they're, and I'mgoing to go and have a human
error today. You know, no matterwhat line of work you're in, if
(25:40):
one does occur, there's always acontributing factor. So being
able to look and avoid, andremove those contributing
factors that lead to doubt. Sothose are what our focus areas
are in being able to make surethat the human does not have
these additional distractions,or additional contributing
factors that essentially gets intheir way of maintaining a safe
(26:03):
environment. Absolutely.
Jason Ambrosi (26:06):
Couldn't have said that better myself. Well,
thank you for joining us todayAkbar. Safety and aviation is
truly a team effort, and weappreciate the work you and your
program are doing to strengthensafety and an aviation.
Beginning this month, you canread more about the work of the
aerospace operations and safetyprogram and a series we're doing
(26:28):
in collaboration with NASA inour magazine. I also want to
thank Captain Wendy Morris, ournational safety coordinator, our
ASR chairs, and the hundreds ofpilot volunteers and staff that
make up our air safety,organization, and engineering
and air safety. Their tirelessefforts have contributed to the
safest period in our history.However, the work continues as
(26:49):
we always strive to improvesafety and caring our pastures,
fellow crew, and cargo. Thankyou for tuning in to this
episode of The airline pilotpodcast. If you haven't already,
make sure you subscribe so thatyou do not miss any episodes.
And if you enjoy this episode,let your fellow crew members
know about the show. If you haveany questions or topics you'd
(27:10):
like us to cover, reach out topodcast@alpa.org to listen and
subscribe to the airline pilotpodcast or learn more about
Alpha. Check us outonline@alpa.org Or find us on
all major podcast platforms.Until next time, this is the
airline pilot pocket productioncopyright ALPA 2024. All rights
reserved. Thanks and have a safeflight.
Welcome to the Air Line Pilot Podcast. I'm
Jason Ambrosi. As the largestnon governmental aviation safety
organization, ALPA keeps closeties to our partners in safety
across the industry. Today we'rejoined by one of those partners,
Akbar Sultan, the director ofNASA, airspace operations and
safety program. This programplays a key role in researching
(00:28):
and identifying safety threatsand opportunities. Thank you for
joining us, Akbar.
Akbar Sultan (00:33):
Thank you, Captain Ambrosi, for having us today
here.
Jason Ambrosi (00:35):
Absolutely. Before we jump into the meat and
potatoes, I'll say I come fromlargely the industrial side of
ALPA. However, our roots are insafety since our beginning in
1931. And it's been great seeingfirsthand the incredible work
our volunteers and staff do Onthe safety front every day. And
I'm excited to communicate theseefforts on behalf of our
(00:57):
listeners. So NASA and FAA havebeen great partners for decades
and mitigating risk in aviationthrough the commercial aviation
safety team or cast. Would yougive our listeners a bit of
background on the work and someof the developments and
processes NASA has helped tobuild?
Akbar Sultan (01:15):
Certainly, so first of all, um, you know, NASA
has a very long and rich historyin aviation. I mean, we go back
to 1915, when there was a for itoriginally, NACA was established
the National Advisory Counciland aeronautics. And you go in
what we say today is, NASA is inthe DNA of aviation. So when you
(01:38):
fly, whether it's a ground basedsystem, or an avionics system or
an aircraft, you know, system orengine, you won't necessarily
see a NASA logo on something.But if we've had our our hands
on it, somewhere down the line,as aviation has evolved. So for
example, if we look at some ofthe big advancements in the for
(02:00):
example, in the 1970s, we helpedpromote, and spearhead Crew
Resource Management, which had abig change on how we fly
aircraft today, and how we makedecisions in the cockpit. In the
1980s, we helped develop theenhanced vision systems and
(02:25):
synthetic visions and foroperations in low visibility
conditions. And of course, as welook, you know, closer in more
recently, after the unfortunateColgan air accident, we actually
led six safety enhancementsunder the commercial aviation
(02:47):
safety team for prevention ofstall in helping with Upset
Recovery, which essentially wasif you look at the simulators,
that were used for stallrecovery operations, the earlier
models were very much linearmodels, which said you know, the
plane is flying steady, and thenthere is an issue it says your
(03:11):
installed but however, thesimulator was so perfectly
flyable it did not have thatmushy feel, or the controls were
for example, not reversed, itcould not emulate a proper style
properly. So we enhance thosealgorithms. So that now a pilot
can truly experience in thesimulated environment, what it
feels like, such that when youknow, should they unfortunately
(03:34):
have that encounter, they have abetter muscle memory on how to
react to it. So that technologyhas been now transferred to all
the aviation community for us,as well as being able to enhance
the algorithms to train them forUpset Recovery conditions. I am
for example, I used to sail longtime ago. And if you're a
(03:54):
sailor, you can know thatsometimes you you stall your
rudder, right? You need toreverse the rudders in order to
reattach the flow. And that samething happens with absolute
recovery conditions. So, theseare some of the main things that
we have helped develop. And ifyou look at CAST, you know, it
was formed in the 90s. In in, inthe in that same timeframe. NASA
(04:18):
led the effort to show thatusing data analytics, you can
try to go into more proactivesafety environment to be able to
identify some things, precursorsto accidents or incidents, or to
identify trends. And thatcapability very much resulted in
the creation of Assayas in theearly 2000s. So as you can see,
(04:42):
you know, we we don'tnecessarily have an ownership of
something. However, as aviationhas evolved, we've had
significant contributionsthroughout certain timeframes.
Jason Ambrosi (04:55):
Yeah, that's that's incredible. And it's it's
it's It's amazing to see thework that so many different
organizations do together tokeep that level of safety
getting better, right? If at anypoint in our history, we said,
Okay, we're safe enough now, asthe system get bigger and
bigger, there'd be you know,numbers of, of accidents, that
(05:17):
would be never acceptable. Sothe fact that your organization
organization, so many otherorganizations strive to have an
increased level of safety, andeven now that we're in the
safest period in history, keeppushing that that bar higher and
push that bar forward. But sowhat are you working on, or
researching now to mitigaterisk?
Akbar Sultan (05:38):
So our primary focus right now is on this
concept called an entireAviation Safety Management
System, which is, how do you gofrom the current environment of
our reactive and proactiveenvironment to a more predictive
environment? And using dataanalytics, and automation to do
(05:59):
monitor alert and mitigation ofsafety events and looking for us
precursors? So that's in theearly stages of the research
that we're currently kind ofdoing a lot of work on
Jason Ambrosi (06:11):
the notice at work? What what did you just
explain that a little more, if
Akbar Sultan (06:15):
you don't mind? Certainly. So for example, you
know, I might give one exampleis is looking at Mr approaches.
So for example, if using dataanalytics, and everything that's
ongoing on in the flight datarecorder, and using those
telemetry data, and looking atthe state of the NASS in their
(06:38):
region, and looking at what allthe other aircraft have done,
winds, whether the state of thepilot, how many hours they have
had on onboard, and, you know,what is their state of
alertness, everything elsethat's going on. So a tremendous
amount of data analytics can beat play. And being able to look
at that and the aircraft stateand say, before the pilots are
(07:00):
able to actually make a decisionfor a go, no, go on a go around,
having the algorithm be able tosay, you know, almost 30
seconds, and sometimes up to aminute before stating that,
given the current aircraftstate, and the approach path,
and everything else that's goingon in an ass, you know, maybe
you should do a go around atthis higher altitude, higher
(07:21):
energy state. So this is kind oflike an algorithm that we've
been able to research in the labenvironment, of course, but this
is something that can haveapplication in the real world.
So this is now getting into thatmore predictive automation
environment, being able toassist the crew in in being able
(07:42):
to essentially have automation,you know, do this human machine
or automation teaming. Becauseat the end of the day, you human
is fully responsible for thevehicle safety. So how do we add
additional enhancements andcapability for that decision
making?
Jason Ambrosi (07:59):
Identify the risk earlier I see is what it sounds
like. What other trends have youas your office recently
identified or, or areas in whichwe we could do something to
improve, improve safety beyondwhere we are today?
Akbar Sultan (08:12):
That we've looked at a couple of things. So first,
of course, you know, runwayincursions, and in wrong surface
approaches, and those things, Iknow have been making a lot of
headline news. We know NASA hasdeveloped a capability that
using ATSB, in whichunfortunately is not widely
(08:34):
deployed, right. But if aircraftthat are ATSB, in equipped, you
could provide the crew someadditional alerts and
information in the cockpit, bothfor aircraft on the ground as
well as on the approach in orderto be able to avoid runway
(08:55):
incursions, or wrong surfaceapproaches. This is a capability
that one can look at it from twosides. One is say, you know, of
course, it enhances safety. Butfrom the other perspective, I
know where the airlines inhaving to equip, there's always
that first question they alwaysask, right? Well, you have this
(09:15):
new technology dsbn Why should Iinvest in it? So this way, we
are able to now say that, okay,if if you were to invest in this
technology, now, this is areward that perhaps you could,
you could get out of thatequipage so that's a return on
investment. So that's, that'sone of the things for example,
(09:36):
that we've been looking at. Thatseems
Jason Ambrosi (09:38):
like a simple one. If I might not say so II
ADSB. And that it's just seemslike common sense because it
gives you more situationalawareness as a pilot.
Situational Awareness is is it'sgreat. So just like you said,
runway incursions or you know,wrong, wrong approaches. Just
having that situationalawareness. It seems like a no
brainer that that would be aninvestment that that Errol lines
(10:00):
and industry would want to make.
Akbar Sultan (10:02):
Absolutely. But as you can see, I mean, you're a
pilot, there's a huge cost andairlines are they're not the
high margin endeavors. So thisis where what we tried to do is
we just because of that, we tryto create capabilities in
(10:23):
technologies that can piggybackoff of tech investments, such as
at ESPN. So this way, forexample, we can say like, Okay,
if you do invest in ESPN, whatadditional capability
enhancement could I provide you?So the safety is an example.
We've developed a couple ofadditional tools, for example,
(10:45):
to reduce noise emissions andfuel that's actually in
demonstrations out in Dallas,Fort Worth, and Dallas love
field with a few airlines thatare saving tremendous amount of
fuel, for example, with what afew of our airline partners out
there.
Jason Ambrosi (10:59):
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's great. Going way
back, NASA's ASR is AviationSafety Reporting System, and you
know, other confidential safetyreporting systems like ASAP,
when, okay, at the airline levelthat most airlines have, have
implemented our vital tools inunderstanding the trends of
(11:20):
safety? How does NASA and othergroups utilize this information
provided by you know, actualline pilots out there in this
environment? And when what valuedoes that contribute to the, to
the research projects?
Akbar Sultan (11:33):
So, so first of all, you know, if we look at
some systems, such as ASRS, it'sa lack of better word, it's a
wealth of information, where youcan get almost like approaching
almost 1000 reports a month, forexample, that that are received
within that system. And ofcourse, you can also even
(11:53):
supplemented with as a science,which has additional information
on data fusion, for example, aswell. And you heard me talk a
little bit, you know, a fewmoments ago, talk about
automation, using automation tohelp monitor or alert and
mitigate potential safetyhazard. So for these algorithms,
(12:14):
they need a lot of data, inorder to sort of normalize to
say, what is a safe event? Andhow do you now look for that
outlier. So in order to in orderto make sure that we are able to
detect that potential outliercorrectly, because at the end of
the day, you don't want to havetoo many false positives, right?
(12:36):
False negatives, I'm sorry. Soso so this is where, where this
tremendous amount of data isextremely crucial for us, we're
able to use that data and mineit and then help train the
algorithms to make sure thatwe're not missing anything. So
those are like the falsenegatives that you perhaps you
(12:57):
missed, something that youshould have flagged. And or
we're not having too many falsepositives, where we flagging a
lot of things that should not beflagged. Because at the end of
the day, you want the humanthat's using the system to have
trust in the system. Now, if youhave false positives and
negatives, that trust, ofcourse, is lost on automation.
And that's the worst situationone can have in a knavish
(13:19):
environment where the the humanand machine that connect
connectivity is now for example,has been compromised.
Jason Ambrosi (13:27):
That's interesting. You know, we talk
about the line pilotsperspective, what what is the
important of the line pilotperspective from you know, our
ALPA representatives, and whenwe work with government or or
industry workgroups like yours.
Akbar Sultan (13:41):
So, you know, to put it simply, line pilots are
domain experts. You all know asto why something should be done
the way it is, or why somethinghappened the way it happened.
And having that crucialinformation is tremendous. And
(14:03):
also, at the end of the day,what technology needs to be
developed to be helpful to you.Because if NASA develops our
technologies, and we do it in avacuum, we will maybe develop a
very wonderful tool that worksperfectly fine in a lab
environment. However, perhaps itis not implementable and
(14:24):
deployable because it's, it'sgoing to be arduous to deploy in
a real world environment. Sothat's why we try to engage with
the end users as early in theresearch phase as possible. We
actually try to engage with ourusers almost at TRL, one at very
low maturity levels. So that wemay have a concept, but how do
(14:46):
we shape the concept such thatat the end of the day, it's
useful to the to the to the tothe to the actual deployed
entity, and also get thatfeedback to say, you know, this
is how you should perhaps evolvehaven't changed the concept. And
this is what's usefulinformation for me. You know,
going back to what I said amoment ago in terms of those
(15:07):
eight data and data analytics,you know, providing additional
data to a user is notnecessarily helpful because at
the end of the day data is notnecessarily information. Data
needs to be translated in a formthat is useful and digestible by
the end user. And this is thetremendous feedback we get from
the from the aviation community.
Jason Ambrosi (15:28):
I can say as a lion pilot, you know of doing
this now that many years offlying out there I appreciate
when when our perspective islistened to because we like you
said we're in that environmentday in and day out, day and
night. Now shifting gears alittle bit to do all the new
entrance we have so many newentrance, it's going to be a
(15:49):
clogged Naseer, before too long,how will the air transportation
system need to adapt to to keepsuch a safe operating
environment?
Akbar Sultan (15:58):
Well, aviation is changing tremendously. And with
especially with the advent ofnew entrants, because if you
look at the new entrants, it'sgoing to bring far more set of,
you know, the diversity ofoperations is going to be
higher. Because if we look atthe current aviation, it's you
(16:19):
know, Toobin wings, right, and afew rotorcraft throw in a few GA
throwing. And the modes ofsources and sink of operations
are primarily airport to airportor verta, part two of our
report. However, with newentrants, you can sort of see
that the performancecharacteristics of just these
vehicles is going to be far morediverse, you know, you could
(16:41):
have for example, if you'relooking at the Upper East
atmosphere, you could have asupersonic aircraft surance, you
know, going through an airspaceat Mach 1.5, occupied by a hail
that's going at 15 knots, right,just the diversity of the
performance. And the diversityof the missions is going to be
far higher. So of course, thatleads to you know, and also the
(17:05):
density is also going to be muchhigher in depth. You know, the
current NASS maybe is about 50,to 70,000 operations a day,
depending if you exclude orinclude the GA, we could foresee
going into an environmentthere's millions of operations,
if you start looking at the USsmall UAS, as large UAS is and
advanced Air Mobility, it's hardto believe, isn't it? Exactly.
(17:27):
So given those two things,there's going to be higher
levels of complexity. Sotherefore, we have to start
looking at our environment tosay, how do we add additional
automation to assist a human?Because if we say that the human
alone is by themselvesresponsible for the safe
(17:47):
operation of that environment, Ithink we can all agree that the
bandwidth and reaction time isgoing to be stressed for a human
operator. So therefore, how dowe introduce additional
automation to assist humans suchthat we can provide them that
predictive risk, and predictivesafety as services and
capabilities to assist them inthe safe maintenance of the
(18:09):
current aviation system? In onecan also look in terms of the
society's acceptance of, ofsafety events, where no one can
look and say, well, the UnitedStates, we have the safest
aviation in the world, you know,perhaps one can extrapolate, say
one fatality every 10 to 15years. And if we say, we're
(18:33):
going into an environment, we'regoing to have millions of
operations, one can't justextrapolate and say, Okay, we're
going to have a millionfatalities every 1015 years,
society is not going to acceptthat. So that's where as we try
to enhance the safety severalfold, that is going to be our
challenge in making sure that wehave the right capabilities and
(18:54):
technologies to be able toassist humans in that endeavor
is going to be the key.
Jason Ambrosi (18:58):
And properly integrating all these new users
into the into the airspace is isessential, right? You can't have
a drone delivering a packagewandering across the, the
approach path here at DCA orsomething like that, so that the
work has been is cut out to makesure that all the new entrants
(19:18):
are operating in a way thatkeeps everybody safe. Traveling
and shipping public.
Akbar Sultan (19:23):
Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the the main
focus areas of NASA's researchon on the new entrants and
advanced air mobility in UAS isis essentially the two focus
areas are integration into theNASS and how do we integrate
these vehicles safely with theexisting you know, operations
(19:46):
such that you know, any and allvehicles can cohabitate and
coexist harmoniously and safely.And then the second aspect is
the the safety capabilities andservices For these vehicles,
Jason Ambrosi (20:02):
so we talk about fatigue a lot with more
operations, especially comingout of the pandemic. Fatigue has
become an issue for for many ofour members, because the
airlines had a tendency to bringback flying faster than they,
they could, or maybe they someshould have, because we have the
airplanes, but less pilots,because of early retirements.
It's tough. But again, fatigueis front center. Some of the
(20:25):
research that NASA has conductedhas been is crucial to gaining
understanding on fatigue, how itimpacts pilots, and how it
impacts safety. You're currentlystudying and you're wrapping up
a fatigue research sometime thissummer. Is there any? Is there
any insight into that or any anykind of data, your team's
looking at some let us know alittle something early as I
(20:45):
guess what I'm asking? Sure.
Akbar Sultan (20:48):
So we're working with, you know, several airline
partners, both domestic andinternational, in the primary
objectives are, essentially tolook at circadian rhythms for
example, and being able toidentify, you know, the effect
of that on the pilots,alertness, and also look for
(21:14):
scheduling of the crew. Becauseno humans, no two humans are all
alike, right? We all havedifferent circadian rhythms. And
we are all you know, there'speople that are, we say they're
the morning people, afternoonpeople and late day people,
right, and some people are muchbetter in the evenings. So how
do you given the natural rhythmsand Alert States of each crew
(21:40):
member? Is there a way to beable to schedule them such that
now you're putting the crewmembers on the most optimum
scheduled given their most alertcircadian rhythms rather than
just one size fits all sayseverybody is doing red eyes?
Well, some people are better atred eyes than others. So how do
(22:00):
we how do we do that crewresourcing, we have looked at
for example, the the cockpitlighting conditions, and being
able to say, Okay, are therecertain lighting situations
better than others, for First ofall, for each individual pilot,
but also for the, you know, thethe hour of operation and the
(22:25):
duration of the flight. Andother things that we have looked
at, for example, is thedevelopment of this little tool
that we've developed. It'sessentially it's a pilot
alertness tool, PVT plus, youknow, and it's been used by
(22:45):
several airlines in the UnitedStates, where essentially, it's,
it's this iPhone app based toolthat one can enter your, you
know, your your sleep cycleinformation, but also do a
little test. And it immediatelyprovides information back to
say, Okay, what is the state ofalertness for the individual,
(23:07):
such that the individuals andairlines can make better
informed decisions? So these aresome some things that have been
studied through this study thatyou mentioned. But of course,
you know, human fatigue andhuman factors is going to be an
ongoing work. So even though thecurrent study will wrap up
shortly, we wouldn't tend to becarrying on our investment there
(23:31):
going forward for otherpurposes.
Jason Ambrosi (23:34):
Speaking of human factors, can you speak to how
human factors and how theresiliency of of pilots humans
contribute to the safety offlight operations?
Akbar Sultan (23:46):
Certainly. So here, I would like to quote one
of our, you know, colleagues,Kim Pyle from FAS abs, she's
been using these words quite abit in terms of the humans have
the three C's, you know,curiosity, creativity and
compassion. And, and that issomething that automation does
(24:10):
not have in at the end of theday, it's those, you know, among
many others, but those at leastthose three traits that human
provides, always leads to oursafer, you know, Operation
environment for for aviation.And this is, you know, one can
(24:30):
also look at, you know, how dowe use the human contributions
to safety, and what are what iseach pilot doing on a daily
basis? That's leading to thesafe operation of the NASS and
and how do we use the inherentability of a human to be able to
(24:53):
contribute to safety and do theappropriate human machine
teaming? Because if you provideAdding additional information
and assistance throughautomation, want to make sure
that we avoid mode confusions,right? Or any other things. And
one of the things that, forexample, I would even go as far
as to say is perhaps a misnomeris when somebody says, Oh, this
(25:19):
was due to human error. And inno, I would kind of strongly
suggest that nobody wakes up inthe morning and says, I'm going
to go to work today, no matterwhat they do, and no matter what
line of work, they're, and I'mgoing to go and have a human
error today. You know, no matterwhat line of work you're in, if
(25:40):
one does occur, there's always acontributing factor. So being
able to look and avoid, andremove those contributing
factors that lead to doubt. Sothose are what our focus areas
are in being able to make surethat the human does not have
these additional distractions,or additional contributing
factors that essentially gets intheir way of maintaining a safe
(26:03):
environment. Absolutely.
Jason Ambrosi (26:06):
Couldn't have said that better myself. Well,
thank you for joining us todayAkbar. Safety and aviation is
truly a team effort, and weappreciate the work you and your
program are doing to strengthensafety and an aviation.
Beginning this month, you canread more about the work of the
aerospace operations and safetyprogram and a series we're doing
(26:28):
in collaboration with NASA inour magazine. I also want to
thank Captain Wendy Morris, ournational safety coordinator, our
ASR chairs, and the hundreds ofpilot volunteers and staff that
make up our air safety,organization, and engineering
and air safety. Their tirelessefforts have contributed to the
safest period in our history.However, the work continues as
(26:49):
we always strive to improvesafety and caring our pastures,
fellow crew, and cargo. Thankyou for tuning in to this
episode of The airline pilotpodcast. If you haven't already,
make sure you subscribe so thatyou do not miss any episodes.
And if you enjoy this episode,let your fellow crew members
know about the show. If you haveany questions or topics you'd
(27:10):
like us to cover, reach out topodcast@alpa.org to listen and
subscribe to the airline pilotpodcast or learn more about
Alpha. Check us outonline@alpa.org Or find us on
all major podcast platforms.Until next time, this is the
airline pilot pocket productioncopyright ALPA 2024. All rights
reserved. Thanks and have a safeflight.
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