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NASA develops new tool for airline accident prevention NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: September 15, 2004 A "tool" created by NASA scientists to alert airline analysts to potential, unanticipated problems and to enhance safety and reliability in the industry is available for licensing. Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center (ARC), Moffett Field, Calif., developed a "Morning Report" of atypical flights. It automatically identifies statistically extreme flights to airline flight operations quality assurance (FOQA) analysts. The new software may help analysts identify the precursors of incidents or accidents. "The Morning Report offers a promising method for identifying unanticipated problems and opportunities in flight data recorded by commercial aircraft," said Thomas Chidester, Aviation Performance Measuring System manager at ARC. "The Morning Report implements concepts from flight science and statistics into practical applications usable in industry," he added. "Our goal is to focus the limited time of experts on analyzing the most operationally significant events, while broadening and deepening their analytical capabilities," Chidester said. "The challenge is finding and understanding key information from the mass of data generated by aircraft and collected by data recorders," he said. Only a small portion of the data generated by flights are analyzed through the identification of situations where aircraft operate outside pre-defined ranges. The Morning Report tool may be able to interpret more aircraft data for improved analysis. Unlocking information contained in data sets has the potential to enhance safety, reliability and the economics of flight operations. The Morning Report tool has attracted the attention of industry-leading providers of flight data analysis software, looking to improve their analysis tools. SAGEM Avionics of Grand Prairie, Texas, is the first to license the technology. "The licensing of this analysis tool from NASA to SAGEM Avionics is another shining example of how NASA developed technologies are transferred to the private sector to help benefit the American people," said Lisa Lockyer, chief of the Technology Partnerships Division at ARC. The tool provides airline quality assurance personnel with a list of atypical flights in an easy tabular format, highlighting the most extreme five percent. These flights may include groups of flights experiencing an operational problem or unique situations encountered by single flights. Highlighted flights are examined by FOQA analysts to determine whether they represent operational problems. The Morning Report tool was developed by NASA's Aviation System Monitoring and Modeling project under the Aviation Safety and Security program. NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, Washington, manages it. |
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Cameras on the International Space Station see Hurricane Ivan as the orbiting complex flies over the powerful storm. (3min 05sec file)
On Friday, Sept. 10, officials hold a news conference from Utah to update reporters on the recovery operations to salvage the Genesis sample return mission. (44min 47sec file)
Workers recover the Genesis solar wind samples from the impact crater and take the equipment into a facility for examination. (2min 08sec file)
Martin Wilson, manager of the Thermal Protection System Facility, gives a tour of the highly damaged building at Kennedy Space Center in the wake of Hurricane Frances. (2min 31sec file)
Go inside Kennedy Space Center's hurricane-battered Vehicle Assembly Building and also see the damage to the 52-story tall facility's roof. (2min 51sec file)
Officials hold a post-landing news conference in Utah a couple hours after Genesis returned to Earth on Sept. 8. (40min 52sec file)
Powerful tracking cameras spot the Genesis capsule for the first time a couple hundred thousand feet above Earth, prompting applause in the control centers. But just moments later, that joy turned to heartbreak. (1min 02sec file)
The Genesis sample return capsule tumbles through the sky and impacts the desert floor in Utah after its speed-slowing chute and parafoil failed to deploy for a mid-air recovery by a helicopter. (2min 29sec file)
This slow-motion video shows the Genesis capsule slamming into the ground. (1min 06sec file)