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Opinion: The Time Is Ripe For Live Flight Data Streaming

The fallout from two fatal Boeing 737-8 accidents in five months, still in its early stages, is likely to be substantial. Changes to the 737 MAX are in the works, though the seeds for the much-needed flight-control upgrades were sown following last October’s Lion Air Flight 610 (JT610) accident. Certification processes could change as well. Will regulators delegate less to industry? And to what degree will a regulator accept a fellow agency’s technical analysis rather than verify for itself that a foreign-made article meets its local standards?
Simply put, many are demanding more certainty.
The way the MAX was grounded was a marked departure from past airline accidents, when the U.S. FAA and sister agencies around the world worked in coordination and did not rush to judgment. But within 24 hr. of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (ET302) crash, regulators and operators, wary of two 737-8 accidents in such a short period of time, began banning MAX flight operations. The little data available from ET302 was not enough to link it to JT610, but the pressure to act first and validate later was significant. The fleet was grounded more than two full days before the ET302 flight data recorder (FDR) information was downloaded.
Public support of the grounding was overwhelming, and many in the industry, from union members to some operators, lauded the proactive move. The FAA—the last regulator to issue a MAX operations ban as it held out for more information, preferably from the ET302 flight data recorder—was seen as a dinosaur. Reports suggest that the White House, not technical experts, made the final call.
That is disturbing.
The desire to play it safe is understandable, but the air transport industry’s steadily improving fatal accident rate is not the result of hedging bets. It is driven by a deliberate, data-driven approach to risk analysis. The process takes time, however, which is something that a public increasingly expecting instant answers may no longer be willing to accept. When the next air transport aircraft goes down, will the public accept a wait-and-see approach?

Credit: Boeing/Leo Dejillas
It turns out that it may not have to—and data-driven safety experts might not have to compromise much, either.
A path to a middle ground is being blazed based on work that stems from the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in 2014 and Air France Flight 447 in 2009. The most widely discussed resulting changes from those two accidents are new International Civil Aviation Organization standards for tracking aircraft, included in Amendment 40 to ICAO Annex 6. But Amendment 40 includes another element that could ultimately prove to be more useful: timely access to flight data.
Airlines could meet the ICAO standard, which goes into effect in 2021, by streaming FDR data while in flight. And providers of the necessary hardware, software and communications services are teaming up to offer timely flight data to operators. On Boeing’s most recent EcoDemonstrator trials, for example, data streamed from the Fed-Ex 777F used in the tests offered a live snapshot of the aircraft’s activity, plus a 20-min. buffer of data both before and after the so-called triggering event, such as an abrupt altitude change.
The data stream also was used to create a live, graphical depiction of what the aircraft was doing, complete with key flight deck instruments, visible to participants on the ground. The tests, which utilized the Inmarsat and Iridium global satellite networks, included a dedicated microphone that captured and off-loaded cockpit sounds, too.
Widely implementing triggered flight data would require resolution of some issues such as: What triggers the system? Which parameters are streamed? Where does the data go? How would access to it be managed? And, critically, how can the information be kept secure? But none of these are insurmountable.
If the FAA and other regulators had had access to ET302 data, the grounding scenario would have been different. If it could have been confirmed that the causes of the ET302 and JT610 accidents were similar, as now seems to be the case, MAX aircraft would have been parked quickly and with justifiable data to support the move. This would have satisfied both the public’s concern and the safety community’s insistence on reasonable, measured actions.
Making a call on whether to ground an aircraft based on a brief look at FDR data may not be ideal. But it is far more reasonable than making the call without it

https://aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/opinion-time-ripe-live-flight-data-streaming?NL=AW-05&Issue=AW-05_20190322_AW-05_309&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1&utm_rid=CPEN1000001391073&utm_campaign=18876&utm_medium=email&elq2=af6af445c439

Safety Analysis for a flight control system on the MAX was flawed

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/

SSA in rotorcraft

EASA is going to amend CS29.1309 amd CS27.1309, see https://www.easa.europa.eu/document-library/terms-of-reference-and-group-compositions/tor-rmt0712

EASA issues CRD 2014-02: Specific risk and standardised criteria for conducting aeroplane-level saf

This Comment-Response Document (CRD) contains the comments received on Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) 2014-02 (published on 27 January 2014) and the responses provided to them by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). It also contains the draft resulting CS-25 text. Compared to the NPA 2014-02 proposal, several changes have been made to the proposed CS/AMC 25.1309 (system safety assessment) and CS/AMC 25.671 (flight control systems) to clarify various elements based on the comments received while keeping the main elements of the NPA proposal. Some provisions have also been added to address controllability during ditching with no engine power. Concerning the changes to the domain of structure, the proposed amendments to CS 25.629(b), AMC 25.629 and Appendix K are withdrawn; however, the proposed amendments to CS 25.629(d) are maintained. Finally, the proposed amendments concerning reversing systems in CS/AMC 25.933 are maintained. Stakeholders are invited to review the draft resulting text (Appendix B) and provide their reactions, if any. EASA will then prepare the next amendment of CS-25, taking into account the reactions received, if any.

See https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/CRD%202014-02.pdf

RTCA Is No Longer an FAA Advisory Committee

Work Largely Continues as Group Becomes a Standards Development Organization

RTCA, which for decades has developed standards and worked through technical challenges at the behest of the Federal Aviation Administration, is no longer a Federal Advisory Committee (FAC) for the agency.

The FAA declined to renew its contract with RTCA and will instead take over some of what RTCA was doing – though, for now, the changes will be limited.

RTCA is now an independent Standards Development Organization (SDO) though it continues to work with the FAA using nearly the same RTCA committee structure it has for years. The group will also continue working with EUROCAE, its European counterpart, to develop joint standards.

“Mindful of the FAA’s desire to continue without interruption, the production of high-quality standards and guidance materials, RTCA is committed to a seamless transition,” saidRTCA President Margaret Jenny in a prepared statement.

Indeed, most everything will continue as it has before and aviation officials will still be represented at the meetings.

“The FAA will still request standards from us,” Jenny told Inside GNSS. “They’ve still indicated that they will be invoking them as a means of compliance. So the thing that changes is that where we would have had a government person on every committee called a designated federal official – that’s required for a federal advisory committee – they would just become more of a liaison to the committees. Their intention is to stay involved so that part really doesn’t change.”

One distinct change is that the Drone Advisory Committee and the NextGen Advisory Committee will be managed by the FAA, at least until a contractor can be found to handle day-to-day operations – a contractor that could potentially be RTCA.

“The NACand DAC have new charters as stand-alone FACs,” the FAA said in a statement sent to Inside GNSS.”They are identical and intact as they are today.They will still be administered by RTCA or another vendor.They will be working on the same issues.All the benefits of these two advisory councils are still in place and valued.”

Given the effort to maintain stability it is not entirely clear what prompted FAA to drop its advisory committee arrangement with RTCA, which has been in place since 1976. Two sources who requested anonymity to be able to discuss the matter believed that it was fueled by a desire within the administration to cut the total number of advisory committees.

“What we were told is that the Department of Transportation was doing a thorough review of all their federal advisory committees to determine whether they needed to stay in place,” Jenny said. “When they looked at RTCA, we are a little bit unique in that we are a utilized Federal Advisory Committee and all we were told was they determined that they would prefer to have it run by the FAA as opposed to an outside entity.”

A utilized advisory committee is where an organization outside of government runs the FAC.

The shift is entirely not without potential consequences. It may cause something of a delay in the work of both the Drone and NextGen groups. The FAA cannot issue new tasking statements for the two groups until 15 days after Federal Register notice of the new groups being chartered (launched). The notices for each group appeared May 31.

Though the shift may be causing some confusion the next meetings for the two panels are supposed to proceed on the same day though there might be changes in location. The FAA will advise committee members.

There is at least one other potential consequence as well. RTCA, as a more independent body, will now be able to work on standards at the behest of industry. In fact industry-requested standards could be an opportunity for RTCA to grow, Jenny said.

“So we could do those kinds of things without FAA requests,” she said. “We would just make sure that, number one, they (they requestors) had multiple companies and number two, anything we do as a standards organization will be compliant with all U.S. antitrust laws.”

If industry did seek a standard there likely would still be FAA involvement, she said.

“We would typically talk to the FAA about whether they would invoke it,” Jenny explained, “and then we would make a decision with our industry members on whether we felt we should go ahead and start a voluntary standard that they would use for compliance or use, basically, to make sure that they’re building according to the standards.”

http://insidegnss.com/rtca-is-no-longer-an-faa-advisory-committee/

EASA says airlines’ tech ban may compromise safety

Europe’s aviation regulator voiced concern on Wednesday over the risk of battery fires in the cargo holds of passenger planes after U.S. and British authorities banned certain electronics from passenger cabins despite U.S. assurances that its agency had been thoroughly briefed on the proper handling of electronics.

The European Aviation Safety Agency, which is responsible for safe flying in 32 countries, said personal electronic devices (PED) carried a fire risk due to their lithium batteries and should preferably be carried inside passenger cabins so that any problems could be identified and dealt with.

In regard to the European agency’s concerns, the U.S. Transportation Safety Administration said it had “coordinated closely with the FAA” (Federal Aviation Administration) on the logistics of the ban and that the agency had provided information to airlines regarding appropriate handling of electronics and lithium batteries.

The European agency, however, warned in a bulletin: “When the carriage of PEDs in the cabin is not allowed, it leads to a significant increase of the number of PEDs in the cargo compartment. Certain precautions should therefore be observed to mitigate the risk of accidental fire in the cargo hold.”

Computers in checked baggage must be completely switched off and “well protected from accidental activation,” it added.

The Cologne, Germany-based agency issued its guidance two weeks after the United States and Britain banned gadgets larger than a smartphone from passenger cabins on flights from certain countries because of security concerns.

The European safety recommendation is not mandatory, but is likely to rekindle a debate about the new rules, which some airline chiefs have criticized as inconsistent or ineffective.

A group representing 38,000 European pilots said last week it was “seriously concerned” about the ban, on the grounds that it could create new safety risks.

“With current airplane cargo hold fire suppression systems, it might prove to be impossible to extinguish a lithium battery fire in the cargo hold, especially when the batteries are stored together. Therefore, any event of this nature during flight would more than likely be catastrophic,” the European Cockpit Association said.

It is not the first time regulators have called for personal devices to be carried in the cabin, but possibly the first time such measures have clashed so directly with security considerations.

In 2015, international regulators urged airlines to transport lithium-powered hoverboards in the cabin following reports of the popular devices catching fire. Several airlines went even further and banned them altogether, but travel experts say such a draconian ban on computers would carry little support from the industry or its lucrative business travelers.

JUGGLING RISKS

Security experts say the decision to place electronics into checked bags on U.S.-bound flights from eight Middle East or North African countries suggests Washington has intelligence that enough material can now be packed into a laptop, usually disguised as its battery, to cause catastrophic damage.

Placing such objects in checked baggage would expose them to greater screening for explosives and reduce the chances that a hidden bomb could be deliberately placed next to the cabin wall.

France has been studying whether and how to apply similar restrictions on cabin baggage, security sources say.

Last year, a suspected suicide bomber tried to blow up a Somali jetliner as it was taking off from Mogadishu by placing a computer bomb near the window. He was sucked out of the jet without causing it to crash, but the incident focused attention on the threat of bombs hidden inside ordinary-looking gadgets.

Reuters last month reported that the rules banning many items from passenger cabins on U.S.- and Britain-bound flights would, however, force a rethink on fire safety concerns now that they were being consigned to the hold.

EASA’s warning highlights the struggle to juggle rules on safety with increasingly stringent security protections and the wider risk that rules to solve one problem can lead to another.

FACT BOX European guidelines on carrying computers on airplanes
The FAA says such “unintended effects” are one of the common themes it has identified in its database on lessons learned from past crashes.

“The recent laptop ban on certain routes to the USA has brought into sharp relief exactly this challenge,” said UK-based aviation consultant John Strickland.

“Simply taking items powered by lithium batteries and stashing them in the hold is not an option unless done with sufficient attention to safety,” he added.

Safety regulators have focused for years on the growing headache caused by temperamental lithium-ion batteries.

In 2015, the FAA told airlines not to let passengers pack extra lithium-ion batteries inside their checked baggage.

Airlines had already been alerted to the risk of carrying large shipments of lithium batteries as cargo after a UPS Boeing 747 cargo jet crashed in 2010, killing both crew.

But current FAA advice suggests it has fewer concerns than its European counterpart about the threat of fires from batteries already installed in individual passenger’s devices.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-airlines-electronics-safety-idUSKBN1772CA

EASA rulemaking task (RMT.0049) on CS25.1309

Design improvements may limit the probability of technical failures. With 45 % of fatal accidents involving some sort of technical failures during the past 10 years, this is both a major accident outcome and a precursor of other types of accident. This statement is coming from EASA’s Annual Safety Review 2016. It does not necessarily mean that the technical failure was the direct cause of the accidents, but that a system component failure was identified in the sequence of events of 1 of the 5 fatal accidents in CAT Aeroplanes during the past 10 years (out of a total of 11). This could be an engine failure, an avionics system failure or some other recoverable technical failure. The cause of the accident is usually the result of a combination of circumstances and events that can only be understood after reading the investigation report.

Specific analysis work is ongoing to identify the systemic safety issues that may be present in the domains of airworthiness, maintenance and production. Non-accident data will be used for the analysis

RMT.0049: Specific risk and standardised criteria for conducting aeroplane-level safety assessments of critical systems
To define a standardised criterion for conducting aeroplane-level safety assessment of specific risks that encompasses all critical aeroplane systems on large aeroplanes (i.e. in particular update AMC to CS 25.1309), based on the results of the Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC) Airplane-level Safety Analysis Working Group (ASAWG).
In addition, to amend AMC 25.1309 taking into account the latest updates of industry documents, such as ED79A/ARP4754A.
To update CS 25.671 on safety assessment of flight control systems, based on the results of the ARAC Flight Controls Harmonisation Working Group (FCHWG).
For both objectives, harmonisation with the FAA, the Transport Canada Civil Aviation (TCCA) and Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil (ANAC) will be ensured as much as possible.

A decision is expected during Q4 of 2018. See NPA for more details:

https://www.easa.europa.eu/document-library/rulemaking-subjects/specific-risk-and-standardised-criteria-conducting-aeroplane

Integrating SMSs: Dutch safety probe urges more collaboration

An investigation by Dutch aviation safety officials found that all aviation stakeholders need to work closer together to maintain high safety levels at the international airport.

While it found no evidence to suggest that safety at Schiphol is inadequate, the investigation did reveal a number of safety risks that need to be tackled and Michiel van Dorst, chief executive of Air Traffic Control the Netherlands (LVNL), said the recommendations are in line with a number of initiatives already started by the air navigation service provider.

He cited the training of air traffic controllers and the development of systems that, for example, give the air traffic controller in the tower an additional warning when an aircraft makes a go-around.

In the current situation, aviation stakeholders each have their own certified safety management system. The Dutch Safety Board advised better cooperation between the parties from these sectors, with the Schiphol Safety Platform having an important role in this regard. LVNL said it embraced this recommendation and, together with KLM and Schiphol Group, has already begun investigating the advantages of a coordinating, integrated safety system.

“This would put Schiphol in the lead worldwide,” said Van Dorst. “You need to keep looking at your own organisation, but also at how you can be more effective together. Aviation is the safest form of travel. This is a status we must keep earning. That is why this report contributes so much, in our opinion.”

The Dutch Safety Board also noted that further growth of Schiphol will require more than marginal adjustments to the existing policy.”This calls for a fundamental debate on the future of aviation in the Netherlands and on the options and limitations regarding Schiphol’s further growth,” it said.

In a statement, Dutch flag carrier KLM called the DSB report ‘beneficial’. “Safety is our top priority. For this reason, KLM has implemented a progressive, state-of-the-art safety management system. All operational choices made at KLM are assessed within this system, thereby ensuring that safety is our priority under all circumstances.”

“KLM shares the opinion of the DSB that safety at and around Schiphol of a high standard. KLM feels that the recommendations issued by the DSB provide a firm foundation for further improvement of the safety management system. KLM will closely scrutinise the study and looks forward to working with Air Traffic Control the Netherlands and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to further improve safety standards.”

The Dutch State has final responsibility for the integral safety of air traffic at and around the airport.

http://www.airtrafficmanagement.net/2017/04/dutch-safety-probe-urges-more-collaboration/

EASA aims to fine-tune safety-risk analysis

Forty years after the worst accident in civil aviation history, European authorities are transitioning to a new method of assessing safety risk.

Safety performance has typically been monitored through the blunt tool of counting accidents and serious incidents.

But the European Aviation Safety Agency states that this method is “not a good risk measure”.

In a preliminary safety review covering 2016 the authority says the accident rate of European-operated commercial air transport has been broadly downwards since 2012, to around three per million flights.

The overall number of accidents last year, 18, was the lowest figure for a decade but, in contrast, the number of serious incidents, more than 100, was the highest in the same period.

“This increase was mainly attributable to occurrences relating to technical failures of aircraft systems, medical, runway excursion and loss of separation,” says EASA.

EASA says a new common risk-classification scheme due for implementation this year will “provide a better picture” of safety risks.

The scheme emerged from a European Union directive requiring development, by May 2017, of a mechanism by which necessary rapid action could be identified through analysis of individual safety occurrences.

“Such a scheme should help the relevant entities in their assessment of occurrences and in determining where best to focus their efforts,” the directive states.

IATA states that the commercial airline industry’s accident rate declined to 1.61 per million flights last year, from the previous level of 1.79.

It released its accident statistics days before the 40th anniversary of the Boeing 747 runway collision in Tenerife in March 1977, which resulted in over 580 fatalities and remains the highest-casualty accident in civil aviation history.

The major jet accident rate increased slightly to 0.39, one of the parameters in which the association acknowledges the industry took a “step back”.

But the relative rarity of accidents means that the statistics are easily skewed by individual occurrences, highlighting the need for a more finely-tuned method of analysis.

The European scheme is intended to collate occurrence reports in a format which will facilitate information exchange.

EASA says: “The scheme will help to shift the focus to the probable potential harm of identified hazards to the European aviation system instead of directly measuring the severity of a realised outcome.”

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/easa-aims-to-fine-tune-safety-risk-analysis-435675/

Aviation industry in standoff over making ‘black boxes’ deployable and able to share data faster

Two possible technology updates are deployable recorders, with transmitters for easier location from crash sites, and streaming data devices

A Malay couple watch Malaysia Airlines aircraft at Kuala Lumpur International airport on Jan. 23. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing in March 2014 while traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers aboard.

By ANDY PASZTOR
Three years after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s unresolved disappearance sparked efforts to implement new flight-data recorder technology, the global aviation community is deadlocked over the best way to ensure investigators will have timely access to vital clues in future crashes.

Technical, marketing and jurisdictional disputes-pitting Boeing Co. and U.S. regulators against Airbus Group SE and European authorities-have blocked consensus over prospective changes to today’s “black boxes” that help unravel accidents.

The most prominent disagreement involves “deployable” recorders, devices designed to capture real-time flight data and cockpit conversations, just as damage-resistant black-box recorders do.

But while conventional black boxes are intended to be recovered from wreckage, the alternative devices, already used in a broad range of military jets and helicopters world-wide, are designed to be jettisoned automatically prior to impact and to float.

Airbus AIR, -0.14% and other proponents say that supplementing current systems with deployable technology would lead to easier searches, with features including built-in emergency transmitters that can pinpoint locations on the surface of water.

In the opposing camp, Boeing’s BA, -0.12% position is that the deployable technology is unnecessary partly because there are so few crashes of big jets, and the recorders are expensive to maintain and potentially hazardous if ejected by mistake. The disagreement has played out in various forums, both in public and private. Federal Aviation Administration officials say it is hard to justify the costs of deployable recorders versus the safety benefits.