AEA Pilot's Guide 2023-2024 - 44

A DIGITAL CO-PILOT
Continued from page 42
aviation safety in all phases of flight.
capture. " The digital co-pilot can draw the pilot's
attention to important information or raise awareness
about the aircraft's situation.
This provides not only a huge safety benefit but
also allows the pilot to avoid a major mistake that
could lead to an FAA sanction. " There are plenty of
examples of general aviation pilots calling the wrong
airport tower or in cases with serious consequences
landing on the wrong runway or on a taxiway or
taking off on the wrong runway or a taxiway, " Pollack
said. Serious accidents can occur as a result.
But for single-pilot operation of general aviation
aircraft, and particularly in complex turbine-powered
aircraft, the safety benefits are obvious and have
been confirmed by MITRE studies.
In a 2018 technical paper, MITRE assessed pilot
workload and analyzed human reliability to quantify
pilot error probabilities and accident sequence
frequencies. By modeling pilot performance with
and without the use of the digital co-pilot, MITRE
researchers concluded the technology they
developed " has the potential to significantly reduce
the rates of fatal and total accidents in general
aviation. "
MITRE's team developed the idea to research
digital co-pilot technology because general aviation
accident rates have been holding steady. Meanwhile,
there have been vanishingly few fatal accidents in
Part 121 airline operations in the United States. While
about 300 people are killed each year in general
aviation accidents, as of 2022, it had been two
years since anyone died in a Part 121 commercial
jet accident. Moreover, there have only been two
fatalities in the past 12 years.
Half of the MITRE team are software engineers,
and the other half are human factors experts.
Pollack's colleague on the digital co-pilot project,
Estes, had worked on developing a low-cost runway
incursion prevention feature for portable hand-held
computers with MITRE independent R&D funding.
The function told pilots they were approaching a
runway and to hold short. " It did just one thing, but it
did it very well, " he said. " We thought there must be
more that we can do. " The plan is to assist general
One new digital co-pilot feature is designed to help
single pilots with terrain awareness, and another is
to help them avoid a loss of control. " Panel-mounted
navigation systems show terrain but don't give the
pilot an idea of what it will take to avoid the terrain
such as a certain rate of climb to clear the mountain
ahead, " Pollack said. " It's sort of like asking Siri,
could I hit the mountain? " Controlled flight into terrain
is a major concern in general aviation safety.
To alert the pilot to the possibility he may lose
control of the aircraft, the digital co-pilot can alert
him or her to a slow roll in instrument conditions that
goes unnoticed by the inner ear and can result in a
graveyard spiral. Loss of control is responsible for
a lot of general aviation fatal accidents. A MITRE
digital co-pilot algorithm can also monitor energy
management during an approach.
Part 121 operations include two pilots, and the
human co-pilot can assist not only with information
prompts and checklists but also actions coordinated
with the pilot flying the aircraft. When the Commercial
Aviation Safety Team started its work in 1997, it was
probably hard for the commercial aviation industry
to imagine how successful the effort would be in
reducing fatal airline accidents.
Commercial jets live in a redundant-systems world
with multiple engines, guidance computers, and
radios. Single pilots of general aviation aircraft only
have God as a co-pilot as was suggested by a World
War II fighter pilot in the title of his 1943 book " God
is My Co-pilot " about his solo combat exploits. GA
pilots have very few redundant systems onboard their
aircraft. MITRE wanted to figure out how to assist
these single pilots.
So far, the MITRE team has created 60 different
features, and the team continues to develop new
features and studies the top five to 10 types of
accidents as one of the inputs to that effort.
The digital co-pilot can be used as a memory
prompt. For example, if the controller tells the pilot to
report 3 miles on a left base, he has to remember this
request at the right moment while flying into the traffic
pattern, monitoring traffic, configuring the aircraft and
maneuvering to set up for an approach. So when
receiving that instruction, he can tell the digital copilot
to remind him to report at that point. The digital
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