An IntegratedTurbulence Hazard Decision Aid for the Cockpit

Aircraft encounters with turbulence are the leading cause of injuries in the airline industry and result in significant human, operational, and maintenance costs to the airline community each year. A large contributor to the above injuries and costs is that flight crews do not have sufficient situational awareness of the location and severity of potential turbulence hazards to their aircraft. AeroTech will improve pilots' situational awareness of turbulence hazards by developing a cockpit Turbulence Hazard Decision Aid that provides them with integrated, graphical turbulence hazard information scaled to their specific aircraft. This display will remove the need for inference that is required to interpret current turbulence information. With better knowledge of turbulence hazards' severity and location, pilots will be able to avoid turbulence encounters or prepare for them by having all occupants seated with seatbelts on, thereby avoiding injuries. Phase II work will develop a prototype decision aid, based on the Phase I CONOPS and results, and then evaluate the prototype in both a PC simulation and a flight simulator. By the end of Phase II a meaningful, Integrated Turbulence Hazard Decision Aid will be developed and tested, paving the way for flight evaluations and commercialization in Phase III.