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January 13, 2008

Data Mining: Dumpster Diving Airline Incidents

Not to make this a weekend habit, but here is the most interesting article I read today (out of a hundred or so that I scan most Sunday mornings). It's on the unusual problem that commercial planes don't crash often enough anymore -- we're in the most major-accident-free period in aviation industry history -- to produce meaningful safety data, so manufacturers and airlines are data mining to find creeping risk before it bites them.

Pilots and executives at 16 other airlines have similar data-monitoring initiatives approved by the Federal Aviation Administration that are known as flight operations quality assurance programs. The carriers scour the flight data, which is often combined with pilot reports, to identify potential "precursors," a buzzword in aviation circles used to describe events that often go unnoticed until they lead to an accident. The data are amazingly detailed -- small onboard memory discs (not the "black boxes") capture hundreds of parameters that include airspeed, pitch angles, engine temperatures and movements.

Such data initiatives have grown so extensive in recent years that the FAA has launched its own effort to mine the information in search of precursors. Seven carriers have signed on to the initiative, which began in October. The FAA, which already combs government safety databases looking for precursors, thinks the flight data will be a powerful tool when combined with other information, including pilot reports and radar plots.

...[US Airways] has even used the database to pinpoint unstable approaches to runways at different airports. Pilots were having trouble on one type of approach into Las Vegas's international airport, so the carrier rewrote its charts to give pilots a better sense of when to make their turns, pilots and executives said.

Two years ago, a few US Airways jets were damaged when their tails hit the ground on takeoff. Such events are exceedingly rare, especially among highly trained pilots. The company's executives were perplexed -- until they analyzed flight data, which showed their planes' average pitch rate at takeoff was too high by a few tenths of a degree.

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