Qualified Pilots Research Articles

Optimizing Undergraduate Pilot Training 2.5 at Vance Air Force Base

With a continued increase in demand for qualified pilots, in an environment of continual budget constraints, the Air Education Training Command has been searching for ways to streamline Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT). Leadership has recently implemented UPT 2.5 to train pilots more effectively. However, the 8th and 33rd Flight Training Squadrons at Vance Air Force Base have had issues efficiently cycling students through. Although UPT 2.5 specifies that it takes no more than 90 days for students to complete the post-preflight portion of the syllabus, it currently takes 126 days on average. We developed a discrete event simulation model of pilot training to identify bottlenecks in the current system, find an optimal class size given current resources, and optimize resources to graduate 32 students per class, the number required by AETC. The results will inform recommendations to increase efficiency within UPT and reduce the pilot shortage.

The nature and costs of civil aviation flight training safety occurrences

The continuing growth of the aviation industry will see robust demand for more qualified pilots in the coming years. To meet the standards required to qualify as pilot, individuals must undergo extensive training. Flight training, like all other parts of aviation, is not without risks. Previous research that examined the nature and costs of accidents and incidents within the general aviation industry has put little emphasis on flight training. The present work explores the nature and costs of incident, serious incidents, and accidents within the Australian flight training industry between the 1st of January 2000 and the 31st of December 2019. This study of 7863 flight training safety occurrences is the single largest study of the phenomena to date. This has facilitated the confirmation of some previous noted results, as well as refuting some others. All flight training data categories are statistically significantly different relative to all general aviation occurrences, as reported to the ATSB. It was noted that safety occurrences during landing and approach phases are significantly higher for flight training than previous studies. Occurrences during climb and standing resulted in more injuries and fatalities than expected. While solo instructional flights were found to be less fatal, the probability of an accident or serious incident or aircraft damage being from solo operations has increased over the period of the study. Of particular concern is that the accident and occurrence rates have increased over the period examined. The fact that the safety of flight training has not significantly improved is further shown by the extremely high costs that have resulted from these incidents and accidents.

Organizational Safety Culture in Pilot Training Schools: Case of North Texas in the USA and South Korea

The sudden increased need for qualified pilots can cause potential risks for aviation training schools in South Korea because new pilot training programs need to be created, or existing organizations need to be expanded quickly. This study investigates safety culture at pilot training schools, builds a conceptual framework, and identifies the relationship between the sub-safety culture category and safety culture level in commercial pilot training schools. The authors survey the safety culture and management for the organizational aspect of these pilot training schools to clarify essential concepts and generate a conceptual safety management model. The authors examine the differences in safety culture between pilot training schools in the USA and South Korea and the effects these differences have on the organizations. Results show that the safety culture between pilot training schools in north Texas in the USA and South Korea is different. A pilot training school has to have a well-defined safety culture and management procedures in place and an awareness of the diverse cultural backgrounds of its student pilots to avoid potential cultural clashes and needless accidents/incidents.

Women and Minorities in Commercial Aviation: A Quantitative Analysis of Data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics

The number of women and minorities working in aviation occupations has been very low and continues to be very low according to data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Occupations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) include aircraft pilots, flight engineers, aircraft mechanics and service technicians. Although the ratio of women and minorities working in these occupations remains low, data from the BLS indicates that the total number of individuals from these underrepresented groups who work in these occupations has increased in the last 2 decades. This research focuses on BLS data to determine employment trends between 2002 and 2021. Assuming that these trends continue, they can be used to predict the number of women and minorities working in these occupations in the future. This research seeks to answer 2 important questions: Is the rate of increase in women and minorities who work in these aviation occupations greater than the rate of increase for White males? If the number of women and minorities who work in these aviation occupations continues to increase at the same rate, what will the aviation workforce of the future look like? Answering these questions will help aviation industry decision makers implement programs that will help recruit and retain more women and minorities to work in these highly paid occupations. Women and minorities represent an untapped reservoir of talent that could help the aviation industry avoid a shortage of qualified pilots and service technicians.

WHERE DOES THE PILOT GO WHEN THE AUTONOMOUS SHIP HAS NO BRIDGE? MASS ROUTING SERVICE AND SMART LOCAL INFORMATION CENTRES

The need for pilots with local knowledge of the danger along the coast has been an essential part of safe navigation for centuries. The International Association of Maritime Pilots state on their webpage that “There is no substitute for the presence of a qualified pilot on the bridge.” At the same time the International Maritime Organization IMO aims to integrate Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) in its regulatory framework, some of which might sail unmanned with no provisions for a bridge onboard. This paper points to this problem and discusses some possible solutions and concludes with suggesting a concepts for a MASS Routing Service based on an automatic Local Information Centre currently researched in the Norwegian project IMAT (Integrated Maritime Autonomous Transport Systems).

Training aircraft selection for department of flight training in fuzzy environment

Modern aviation has gained an important place in the transportation sector since the Montgolfier brothers designed the air balloon. Aircraft are fast becoming a key instrument in passenger and cargo transportation. The last two decades have seen a growing trend towards the use of aircraft as transportation tools. International aircraft companies report that new aircraft orders are increasing every year. However, there is a lack of routes because of the insufficient number of pilots. Therefore, the increase in usage of aircraft has been limited. To respond to this increase in Turkey, it indicates a rise in the number of flight academies. Flight academies have emerged as powerful and expensive platforms for flight training. In the new global economy, the aircraft selection problem has become a central issue for Flight Training Departments, which is planned to open in government universities. In this study, an approach based on the fuzzy BWM method is proposed to select more suitable training aircraft in government universities. Criterion weights and alternative aircraft rankings were determined using the fuzzy BWM method. Afterward, a mathematical model was developed to calculate how many aircraft we need to buy under certain constraints. Necmettin Erbakan University, which wants to train new and qualified pilots, needs training aircraft, which is the most critical factor, and trainers that can provide pilot training. A case study of training aircraft selection was conducted for the Necmettin Erbakan University Department of Flight Training.

Electrically Driven VTOL Flying Car Designing and Aerodynamic Analysis

In this study, the design of the electric powered VTOL Flying car was made in the CAD program, and the longitudinal, vertical and lateral flight dynamics were examined and aerodynamic analysis was made. In the design, the power and propulsion systems of the flying car, avionic systems, security systems, magnetic sensors, navigation landing and take-off methods, requirement verification methods, flight performance values were determined. Our design work for flying cars, which will soon start real-time flights, will guide the people and institutions that will design and produce in this field. A practical flying car should be able to operate safely and environmentally both in public spaces and in the air. For widespread adoption, it must be able to fly without a qualified pilot as we know it as a controller, and must have appropriate purchase and operating costs. Being a qualified car driver and having a pilot license, which certification processes are extremely difficult, is an important obstacle to the adoption and widespread process of the flying car concept. The certification processes of many different countries have been examined for the flying car we will design. Examination of these processes has been guiding in the creation of detailed data on many issues, and in this context, care has been taken to meet the requested competencies on a common ground. In order to overcome these procedures, a VTOL platform with high autonomy has been designed thanks to its subsystems as well as a stable flight dynamics.

Remote Sensing Image Super-Resolution for the Visual System of a Flight Simulator: Dataset and Baseline

High-resolution remote sensing images are the key data source for the visual system of a flight simulator for training a qualified pilot. However, due to hardware limitations, it is an expensive task to collect spectral and spatial images at very high resolutions. In this work, we try to tackle this issue with another perspective based on image super-resolution (SR) technology. First, we present a new ultra-high-resolution remote sensing image dataset named Airport80, which is captured from the airspace near various airports. Second, a deep learning baseline is proposed by applying the generative and adversarial mechanism, which is able to reconstruct a high-resolution image during a single image super-resolution. Experimental results for our benchmark demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed network and show it has reached satisfactory performances.

Relating Sensor Degradation to Vehicle Situational Awareness for Autonomous Air Vehicle Certification

Pilots use situational awareness (SA) to make appropriate aeronautical decisions. Autonomous vehicles will not have a human pilot (or operator) in the loop when off-nominal conditions present themselves, and will rely on sensors to build SA on their environment to make sound aeronautical decisions. As their sensors degrade, it is hypothesized that a point exists where the SA those decisions are based off will be inadequate for sound aeronautical decisions. It will be shown that this point can be identified through modeling and simulation of a simple sensor network to complete a task currently reserved for qualified pilots. This research highlights the process of determining an objective measure for the subjective end and relates it to a possible safety of flight certification for an autonomous system to perform tasks currently reserved for qualified pilots.

Optimizing the mutual arrangement of pilot indicators on an aircraft dashboard and analysis of this procedure from the viewpoint of quantum representations

The purpose of this work is to present the first attempt to provide quantitative analysis and objective justification for designers' decisions that relate to the arrangement of pilot indicators on an aircraft dashboard with the use of video oculography measurements. To date, such decisions have been made only based on the practical experience accumulated by designers and subjective expert assessments. A new method for optimizing the mutual arrangement of the dashboard indicators is under consideration. This is based on iterative correction of the gaze transition probability matrix between the selected zones of attention, to minimize the difference between the stationary distribution of relative frequencies of gaze that are staying in these zones and the corresponding desirable target eye movements that are given for distribution for qualified pilots. When solving the subsequent multidimensional scaling problem, the gaze transition probability matrix that is obtained is considered to be the similarity matrix, the elements of which quantitatively characterize the proximity between the zones of attention. The main findings of this novel work are as follows: the use of oculography data to justify dashboard design decisions, the optimizing method itself, and its mathematical components, as well as analysis of the optimization in question from the viewpoint of quantum representations, all revealed design mistakes. The results that were obtained can be applied for prototyping variants of aircraft dashboards by rearranging the display areas associated with the corresponding zones of attention.

민간 조종사 전환과정 중 조종역량 결정요인 분석

Since airline safety depends significantly on the role of pilot, the importance of airlines’ training qualified pilots and investing in the training program grows. This study aims to analyze the determinants of the commercial airline pilot competencies during the transition course. To this purpose, one-year training evaluation results of 215 new airline pilots in the JET transition course of Company K in 2019 are studied with correlation coefficient analysis, factor analysis, ANOVA, and regression analysis. Undergraduate major and Uljin-trained pilots show higher final-stage scores in PROC, AUTO, and CRM. Due to Uljin-trained pilots’ higher first-stage scores, their score increase during the course is limited. Uljin-trained pilots’ MANUAL scores in the final stage are lower than those of undergraduate major and overseas-trained pilots. Influence of trained location is found greater than English competency, undergraduate GPA, and ground school scores on commercial airline pilot competency evaluation scores during the program. The results will be useful in establishing scenario-based training focusing on different background to apply competency-based training and assessment.

Investigating Offshore Helicopter Pilots’ Cognitive Load and Physiological Responses during Simulated In-Flight Emergencies

ABSTRACT Objectives: This study was designed to explore pilots’ emergency response performance by collecting real-time physiological and cognitive workload data during pre-defined offshore helicopter scenarios in a flight simulator. Background: Qualification processes require helicopter pilots to complete scheduled simulation training to ensure competency in areas that would otherwise be too dangerous to practice while flying the actual helicopter. Unfortunately, little is known about how effective this simulation training is in regard to cognitive and physiological responses. Methods: Ten qualified pilots completed six flight simulations while real-time eye tracking and physiological data were collected. The pilots were assigned to one of two groups based on their regular flying position (First Officer (FO) or Captain). Results: The findings indicated that there is a significant difference in maximal Index of Cognitive Activity (ICAmax) and maximal heart rate (HRmax) values between the two groups while completing the same in-flight emergency scenarios. Conclusions: Results suggest that FOs found the sessions more cognitively demanding and also indicated they would benefit from learning how Captains conduct their radial scan of instruments. Therefore, it is recommended that visual search patterns are included in initial training, all flight simulator training includes eye tracking, heart rate data are collected, and that future longitudinal research follows new pilots through their training/upgrading process.

Autonomous Flight-Test Data in Support of Safety of Flight Certification

The current safety of flight clearances for unmanned aircraft requires a qualified operator who can make decisions and ultimately bears the responsibility for the safe operations of the vehicle. The future of aviation is unmanned, and ultimately autonomous. Yet, a method for certifying an autonomous vehicle to make decisions currently reserved for qualified pilots does not exist. Before we can field autonomous systems, a process needs to be approved to certify them. This paper analyzes the flight-test data (both developmental and operational) of an autonomous decision engine selecting an appropriate landing site for a large rotorcraft in an unprepared landing zone. In particular, this paper focuses on using legacy test and evaluation methods to determine their suitability for obtaining a safety of flight clearance for a system that possesses autonomous functionality. We will show that the autonomous system under test was able to complete a mission currently reserved for qualified pilots under controlled conditions. However, when confronted with conditions that were not anticipated (or programmed), the software lacked the judgment a pilot uses to complete a mission under off-nominal conditions.

Companion interview

Terry Ryan Kane is a genuine high flyer. She is a qualified pilot who has enjoyed a successful career in two different branches of veterinary practice and as a scientific advisor to the US Congress. Her current job involves teaching colleagues to care for the most important species in the human food chain – and one that has been neglected by the veterinary profession.

Generating Certification Evidence for Autonomous Aerial Vehicles Decision-Making

The last 15 years have seen a large uptick in the use of unmanned aircraft. However, the current safety of flight clearances for unmanned aircraft requires a qualified operator who can make decisions and ultimately bear the responsibly for the safe operations of the vehicle. The future of aviation is unmanned, and ultimately autonomous. Yet, a clear path for certifying an autonomous vehicle to make decisions currently reserved for qualified pilots does not exist. This paper presents a preliminary approach for certifying an autonomous controller to select an appropriate landing site for a large rotorcraft in an unprepared landing zone. In particular, this paper will decompose the steps currently used by qualified pilots to the basic requirements to define an envelope where the vehicle will be allowed to operate autonomously while landing. These requirements are the basis for a specification that we examine to ensure it met the requirements. A protocol is developed based on the analyzed specification that will ensure what the vehicle “will not do” while operating autonomously. Finally, we describe how this protocol can be used as the safety of flight evidence, and eventually for clearing an autonomous controller to complete a task reserved for qualified pilots.

Improving safety in organ recovery transportation: Report from the ASTS/UNOS/AST/AOPO transportation safety summit.

Despite the passage of a decade since the tragic loss of an organ recovery team from the University of Michigan, there are currently no national standards governing air and ground transportation of organ recovery personnel. Consequently, the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, and the United Network for Organ Sharing jointly convened a transportation summit to review and update recommendations for national transportation standards. Expanded air transport quality assurance protocols, including a requirement for two engine turbine-powered aircraft piloted by two qualified pilots certified through onsite inspections was recommended. Ground transportation providers must ensure adequate safety restraints are available, ambulance avoided if possible, and the use of lights and sirens minimized. Finally, adequate insurance coverage for all team members, including trainees should be provided and should not rely on carrier liability insurance policies. The summit participants have committed the support of their organizations to promote and enact these regulations nationally.

SIMULATED PILOT-IN-THE-LOOP TESTING OF HANDLING QUALITIES OF THE FLEXIBLE WING AIRCRAFT

This article aims to indicate the differences between rigid and flexible wing aircraft flying (FQ) and handling (HQ) qualities. The Simulation Framework for Flexible Aircraft was used to provide a generic cockpit environment and a piloted mathematical model of a bare airframe generic high aspect ratio wing aircraft (GA) model. Three highly qualified test pilots participated in the piloted simulation trials campaign and flew the GA model with both rigid and flexible wing configurations. The results showed a negligible difference for the longitudinal HQs between rigid and flexible wing aircraft. However, significant changes were indicated for the lateral/directional HQs of the flexible wing aircraft. A wing ratcheting phenomenon manifested itself during the roll mode tests, the spiral mode exhibited neutral stability and the Dutch roll mode shape changed from a horizontal to a vertical ellipse. The slalom task flight tests, performed to assess the FQs of the aircraft, revealed the degradation of both the longitudinal and lateral/directional FQs.

A Comparative Evaluation of Hypotheses to Explain the Black Hole Illusion

ABSTRACT Objective: This study comparatively evaluated seven hypotheses to explain the Black Hole Illusion. Background: Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the Black Hole Illusion (BHI), with differing predictions. The Constant Visual Angle hypothesis predicts that short runways should cause greater BHI. Meanwhile, several other hypotheses predict that longer runways should cause more severe BHI. In addition, there is debate whether lack of ground cues promotes BHI via autokinesis or by biasing pilots’ perception of the runway. Method: Nineteen qualified pilots flew 27 simulated nighttime approaches in a fixed-base flight simulator. Participants flew under different combinations of runway length, starting distance from the runway, and starting altitude. We analyzed glideslope error, defined as a weighted sum of the error above or below a prescribed 3° glideslope, as well as RMSE around the approach path. Results: We found that pilots tended to demonstrate worse BHI effects during approaches to longer runways and when starting at low altitudes compared to high altitudes. Daylight and nighttime flights showed a similar variance around the glideslope. Conclusion: The constant visual angle hypothesis is not supported by our findings. We observed consistent glideslopes across starting locations and similar variance during day/night conditions, leading us to favor biased perception of the runway over autokinetic effects to explain the influence of contextual features on BHI.

Assessing an Aviation Out-of-School Time Program: A Collective Case Study

Recent hiring trends fueled by a growing shortage of qualified pilots and aircraft mechanics serve to increase the pressure on the aviation community to attract young people to the profession. Given the historical reality that the industry is predominantly white and male, this dynamic supports efforts to increase access to underrepresented populations, including women and people of color. This collective instrumental case study sought to contribute insights and outcomes from providing an aviation module during an Out-of-School Time (OST) program in an underserved, primarily African American neighborhood. Thirty-one youth campers and 12 adult camp counselors participated. Thematic analysis and descriptive statistics were conducted to explore data collected via surveys, worksheets, reflections, and observations. The perspectives and attitudes of the youth and counselors who participated in the program were decidedly positive. The results suggested that the campers were connected, engaged, and motivated, even as they seemed at times to be distracted in the program. Games, worksheets, age-appropriate challenges, and one-on-one supervision were effective in supporting lecture and simulator activities. The outcomes recommend the development of aviation programs with activities closely tailored to age-appropriate academic objectives. Additionally, studies to further understand their value may provide insight into the long-term benefits of youth engaged in such programs.

Analysis of Loss of Control Parameters for Aircraft Maneuvering in General Aviation

A rapid increase in the occurrence of loss of control in general aviation has raised concern in recent years. Loss of control (LOC) pertains to unique characteristics in which external and internal events act in conjunction. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved an Integrated Safety Assessment Model (ISAM) for evaluating safety in the National Airspace System (NAS). ISAM consists of an event sequence diagram (ESD) with fault trees containing numerous parameters, which is recognized as casual risk model. In this paper, we outline an integrated risk assessment framework to model maneuvering through cross-examining external and internal events. The maneuvering is in the critical flight phase with a high number of LOC occurrences in general aviation, where highly trained and qualified pilots failed to maintain aircraft control irrespective of the preventive nature of the events. Various metrics have been presented for evaluating the significance of these parameters to identify the most important ones. The proposed sensitivity analysis considers the accident, fatality, and risk reduction frequencies that assist in the decision-making process and foresees future risks from a general aviation perspective.