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NASA NTRS2018

Managing Variability: A Cognitive Ethnography of the Work of Airline Dispatchers

Airline dispatchers' workflow is often described in broad terms like 'flight planning' and 'flight following'. Such high-level descriptions fail to recognize the number and complexity of tasks involved in these activities. An ethnographic study was conducted at three US airlines to understand the cognitive workload involved in flight planning. Fuel planning was identified as one of five key flight planning tasks. Fuel planning was conducted concurrently with other planning and monitoring tasks which often led to interruptions. Planning fuel was dynamic, with recalculations required whenever other factors varied (e.g., payload, route, alternates). This rework increased workload and opportunities for error while reducing efficiency. Four main factors contributed variability to fuel planning: contingency planning, load planning, pilots, and station operations. Strategies for managing variability included pattern identification, use of buffers, rounding up, and leveraging software tools. Software design often added to workload by forcing dispatchers to attend to low level tasks.

dispatcher↗

NASA NTRS1993

Design of a cooperative problem-solving system for enroute flight planning: An empirical study of its use by airline dispatchers

In a previous report, an empirical study of 30 pilots using the Flight Planning Testbed was reported. An identical experiment using the Flight Planning Testbed (FPT), except that 27 airline dispatchers were studied, is described. Five general questions were addressed in this study: (1) under what circumstances do the introduction of computer-generated suggestions (flight plans) influence the planning behavior of dispatchers (either in a beneficial or adverse manner); (2) what is the nature of such influences (i.e., how are the person's cognitive processes changed); (3) how beneficial are the general design concepts underlying FPT (use of a graphical interface, embedding graphics in a spreadsheet, etc.); (4) how effective are the specific implementation decisions made in realizing these general design concepts; and (5) how effectively do dispatchers evaluate situations requiring replanning, and how effectively do they identify appropriate solutions to these situations.

Smith, Philip J.↗

NASA NTRS2018

Flight Awareness Collaboration Tool

FACT is a software program that provides important information about winter weather operations to airline dispatchers and airport personnel. FACT has a "quad" design and shows various maps, text, and tabular information. It also has a team messaging capability. It is meant to be used by airline dispatchers and airport personnel to manage winter storms. This slide set provides a description of FACT that will be released to airline and airport partners who are helping to evaluate FACT. It was most recently presented at a Southwest Airlines meeting at NASA Ames on April 3, 2018.

dispatcher↗

NASA NTRS2019

Flight Awareness Collaboration Tool

FACT is a software program that provides important information about winter weather operations to airline dispatchers and airport personnel. FACT has a "quad" design and shows various maps, text, and tabular information. It also has a team messaging capability. It is meant to be used by airline dispatchers and airport personnel to manage winter storms. This presentation is for a meeting with Boeing. COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT; AIRLINE OPERATIONS; STORMS COMPUTER PROGRAMS; AIRLINE OPERATIONS; WEATHER FORECASTING; MESSAGE PROCESSING; AIRCRAFT COMMUNICATION; WINTER; STORMS (METEOROLOGY); COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT

airline dispatchers↗

NASA NTRS2019

Flight Awareness Collaboration Tool

weather↗

NASA NTRS2018

NASA System Wide Safety Project Safety Metrics Research

This is a short set of PPT slides that we will use when we visit several US airlines to provide an introduction to a data collection task supporting the System Wide Safety Project. The goal is to gain an understanding of what airline dispatchers and other airline personnel see as hazards affecting the safety of flight. We want to list the hazards and how they are evaluated as safety metrics. This may eventually lead to an ability to monitor safety metrics in the National Airspace System and identify and predict possible unsafe situations.

Aviation safety↗

NASA NTRS2018

Flight Awareness Collaboration Tool

airline operations center↗

NASA NTRS2019

Flight Awareness Collaboration Tool

Mogford, Richard↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Demonstration of Airline-Based Airborne Reroute Operations using Trajectory Option Sets and Third-Party Tools

A concept that enables advanced airborne reroute operations is proposed, built on NextGen capabilities called Airborne Reroute (ABRR) and Trajectory Option Set (TOS). The concept introduces new third-party services / tools for the airline dispatchers to generate airline-preferred trajectories in response to convective weather events. The airborne TOS routes are sent to the traffic flow managers, who can evaluate the feasibility of the trajectory options with the help of their own third-party services / tools which have been built for this concept. A virtual demonstration study was conducted to elicit feedback from air traffic and airline subject-matter-experts. The feedback was generally positive, both in the benefits of the concept and the feasibility / need for the new tools to enable the concept but their feedback was mixed on the feasibility of the new tools to be third-party services instead of being integrated into their core tools. Nevertheless, this concept explores and demonstrates an evolutionary pathway toward a service-oriented future that shifts the responsibilities and the capabilities of air traffic operations from the air traffic service providers to the airline industry and third-party vendors.

airborne reroutes↗

NASA NTRS2019

Flight Awareness Collaboration Tool (FACT) User Manual

The Flight Awareness Collaboration Tool (FACT) is a web-based software tool that provides important information about winter weather operations to airline dispatchers and airport personnel. This document provides instructions on how to operate FACT. It reviews FACT goals, features, functions, controls, and data displays. The manual uses text and screen shots of the screens to guide new users on how to access FACT features. This manual is required for FACT distribution to airlines and airports and is needed as part of the NASA patent process.

Dispatcher↗

NASA NTRS2019

Flight Awareness Collaboration Tool Quick Start Guide

winter weather↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Urban Air Mobility Fleet Manager Gap Analysis and System Design

NASA’s Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Sub-Project is engaged in re-search to facilitate the introduction of air taxis into the US National Airspace System. Given the history of conventional aircraft operations, it is clear that dispatcher support will be required for UAM. This paper presents a gap analysis, system requirements, and a workstation design concept for the UAM dispatcher or Fleet Manager (FM) position. The gap analysis focuses on the differences be-tween the tasks of the airline dispatcher and those projected for the FM. FM system capabilities and data requirements are then presented as foundations for soft-ware development. An initial user interface concept is provided. The FM software uses a single, large display. The system supports prediction, monitoring, and task execution. This paper is intended to support FM software design for future air taxi systems.

Richard Mogford↗

NASA NTRS2014

Traffic Management Coordinator Evaluation of the Dynamic Weather Routes Concept and System

Dynamic Weather Routes (DWR) is a weather-avoidance system for airline dispatchers and FAA traffic managers that continually searches for and advises the user of more efficient routes around convective weather. NASA and American Airlines (AA) have been conducting an operational trial of DWR since July 17, 2012. The objective of this evaluation is to assess DWR from a traffic management coordinator (TMC) perspective, using recently retired TMCs and actual DWR reroutes advisories that were rated acceptable by AA during the operational trial. Results from the evaluation showed that the primary reasons for a TMC to modify or reject airline reroute requests were related to airspace configuration. Approximately 80 percent of the reroutes evaluated required some coordination before implementation. Analysis showed TMCs approved 62 percent of the requested DWR reroutes, resulting in 57 percent of the total requested DWR time savings.

weather avoidance↗

NASA NTRS2003

Evaluation of a Dispatcher's Route Optimization Decision Aid to Avoid Aviation Weather Hazards

This document describes the results and analysis of the formal evaluation plan for the Honeywell software tool developed under the NASA AWIN (Aviation Weather Information) 'Weather Avoidance using Route Optimization as a Decision Aid' project. The software tool aims to provide airline dispatchers with a decision aid for selecting optimal routes that avoid weather and other hazards. This evaluation compares and contrasts route selection performance with the AWIN tool to that of subjects using a more traditional dispatcher environment. The evaluation assesses gains in safety, in fuel efficiency of planned routes, and in time efficiency in the pre-flight dispatch process through the use of the AWIN decision aid. In addition, we are interested in how this AWIN tool affects constructs that can be related to performance. The construct of Situation Awareness (SA), workload, trust in an information system, and operator acceptance are assessed using established scales, where these exist, as well as through the evaluation of questionnaire responses and subject comments. The intention of the experiment is to set up a simulated operations area for the dispatchers to work in. They will be given scenarios in which they are presented with stored company routes for a particular city-pair and aircraft type. A diverse set of external weather information sources is represented by a stand-alone display (MOCK), containing the actual historical weather data typically used by dispatchers. There is also the possibility of presenting selected weather data on the route visualization tool. The company routes have not been modified to avoid the weather except in the case of one additional route generated by the Honeywell prototype flight planning system. The dispatcher will be required to choose the most appropriate and efficient flight plan route in the displayed weather conditions. The route may be modified manually or may be chosen from those automatically displayed.

Dorneich, Michael C.↗

NASA NTRS2017

Future ATM Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET) Interface Control Document

This Interface Control Document (ICD) documents the airspace adaptation and air traffic inputs of NASA's Future ATM Concepts and Evaluation Tool (FACET). Its intended audience is the project manager, project team, development team, and stakeholders interested in interfacing with the system. FACET equips Air Traffic Management (ATM) researchers and service providers with a way to explore, develop and evaluate advanced air transportation concepts before they are field-tested and eventually deployed. FACET is a flexible software tool that is capable of quickly generating and analyzing thousands of aircraft trajectories. It provides researchers with a simulation environment for preliminary testing of advanced ATM concepts. Using aircraft performance profiles, airspace models, weather data, and flight schedules, the tool models trajectories for the climb, cruise, and descent phases of flight for each type of aircraft. An advanced graphical interface displays traffic patterns in two and three dimensions, under various current and projected conditions for specific airspace regions or over the entire continental United States. The system is able to simulate a full day's dynamic national airspace system (NAS) operations, model system uncertainty, measure the impact of different decision-makers in the NAS, and provide analysis of the results in graphical form, including sector, airport, fix, and airway usage statistics. NASA researchers test and analyze the system-wide impact of new traffic flow management algorithms under anticipated air traffic growth projections on the nation's air traffic system. In addition to modeling the airspace system for NASA research, FACET has also successfully transitioned into a valuable tool for operational use. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) traffic flow managers and commercial airline dispatchers have used FACET technology for real-time operations planning. FACET integrates live air traffic data from FAA radar systems and weather data from the National Weather Service to summarize NAS performance. This information allows system operators to reroute flights around congested airspace and severe weather to maintain safety and minimize delay. FACET also supports the planning and post-operational evaluation of reroute strategies at the national level to maximize system efficiency. For the commercial airline passenger, strategic planning with FACET can result in fewer flight delays and cancellations. The performance capabilities of FACET are largely due to its architecture, which strikes a balance between flexibility and fidelity. FACET is capable of modeling the airspace operations for the continental United States, processing thousands of aircraft on a single computer. FACET was written in Java and C, enabling the portability of its software to a variety of operating systems. In addition, FACET was designed with a modular software architecture to facilitate rapid prototyping of diverse ATM concepts. Several advanced ATM concepts have already been implemented in FACET, including aircraft self-separation, prediction of aircraft demand and sector congestion, system-wide impact assessment of traffic flow management constraints, and wind-optimal routing.

FACET↗

NASA NTRS2016

Design and Development of a Flight Route Modification, Logging, and Communication Network

There is an overwhelming desire to create and enhance communication mechanisms between entities that operate within the National Airspace System. Furthermore, airlines are always extremely interested in increasing the efficiency of their flights. An innovative system prototype was developed and tested that improves collaborative decision making without modifying existing infrastructure or operational procedures within the current Air Traffic Management System. This system enables collaboration between flight crew and airline dispatchers to share and assess optimized flight routes through an Internet connection. Using a sophisticated medium-fidelity flight simulation environment, a rapid-prototyping development, and a unified modeling language, the software was designed to ensure reliability and scalability for future growth and applications. Ensuring safety and security were primary design goals, therefore the software does not interact or interfere with major flight control or safety systems. The system prototype demonstrated an unprecedented use of in-flight Internet to facilitate effective communication with Airline Operations Centers, which may contribute to increased flight efficiency for airlines.

Merlino, Daniel K.↗

NASA NTRS1993

An empirical evaulation of computerized tools to aid in enroute flight planning

The paper describes an experiment using the Flight Planning Testbed (FPT) in which 27 airline dispatchers were studied. Five general questions was addresses in the study: Under what circumstances does the introduction of computer-generated suggestions (flight plans) influence the planning behavior of dispatchers; what is the nature of such influences; How beneficial are the general design concepts underlying FPT; How effective are the specific implementation decisions made in realizing these general design concepts; How effectively do dispatchers evaluate situations requiring replanning and how effectively do they identify appropriate solutions to these situations. The study leaves little doubt that the introduction of computer-generated suggestions for solving a flight planning problem can have a marked impact on the cognitive processes of the user and on the ultimate plan selected.

Smith, Philip J.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Ground-Based Icing Condition Remote Sensing System Definition

This report documents the NASA Glenn Research Center activities to assess and down select remote sensing technologies for the purpose of developing a system capable of measuring icing condition hazards aloft. The information generated by such a remote sensing system is intended for use by the entire aviation community, including flight crews. air traffic controllers. airline dispatchers, and aviation weather forecasters. The remote sensing system must be capable of remotely measuring temperature and liquid water content (LWC), and indicating the presence of super-cooled large droplets (SLD). Technologies examined include Profiling Microwave Radiometer, Dual-Band Radar, Multi-Band Radar, Ka-Band Radar. Polarized Ka-Band Radar, and Multiple Field of View (MFOV) Lidar. The assessment of these systems took place primarily during the Mt. Washington Icing Sensors Project (MWISP) in April 1999 and the Alliance Icing Research Study (AIRS) from November 1999 to February 2000. A discussion of the various sensing technologies is included. The result of the assessment is that no one sensing technology can satisfy all of the stated project goals. Therefore a proposed system includes radiometry and Ka-band radar. A multilevel approach is proposed to allow the future selection of the fielded system based upon required capability and available funding. The most basic level system would be the least capable and least expensive. The next level would increase capability and cost, and the highest level would be the most capable and most expensive to field. The Level 1 system would consist of a Profiling Microwave Radiometer. The Level 2 system would add a Ka-Band Radar. The Level 3 system would add polarization to the Ka-Band Radar. All levels of the system would utilize hardware that is already under development by the U.S. Government. However, to meet the needs of the aviation community, all levels of the system will require further development. In addition to the proposed system, it is also recommended that NASA continue to foster the development of Multi-Band Radar and airborne microwave radiometer technologies.

Reehorst, Andrew L.↗