Managing a Data-link Failure of a Single-piloted Airliner during Flight: A System-Theoretic Process Analysis

Abstract

Each modern concept of Single Pilot Operations (SPO) for a commercial airliner in research employs a remote pilot and/or remote super-dispatcher as ground-based support to handle any off-nominal and emergency situation on-board. Hence, a data-link break-up poses a hazard for flight safety. Existing technology from unmanned aviation for mission management is considered in how it could be applied to SPO-specific procedures to handle data-link failures. A predictive System-Theoretic Process Analysis of different types of data-link failures during flight exemplifies how an automated contingency management system could assess the data-link’s quality and alert the single-pilot to continue safe operations. A complete loss of link requires an emergency landing via autoland that is administered by the mission management. Nonetheless, the systems and procedures design(s) to manage data-link contingencies must consider the reliability of other components of the single-piloted airliner.

Systems Thinking in Aerospace: The Contributions to the Design of Future Airliners’ Single Pilot Operations

“…CWA in combination with social network analysis (SNA) were used to allocate functions and give general design advice (Schmid et al, 2020;Stanton, Harris, & Starr, 2016). STAMP and STPA have been used to model pilot incapacitations and rapid decompression predictively (Revell et al, 2019;, 2019a and to define requirements for training and technological infrastructure elements (Schmid, Korn, Wies, & Stanton, 2019;Schmid & Stanton, 2019c). Baseline analyses had been created before to serve as a model to transfer operating principles to future SPO by using STPA (Schmid, Vollrath, & Stanton, 2018) and EAST (Stanton, Plant, et al, 2019).…”