Avionics and Cockpit Research for Safer General Aviation Operations

Aircraft instrumentation has always been intrinsically related to flight safety. The challenge of blind and bad-weather flying in the 1920s led to development of both radio navigation equipment and tech­niques, and specialized blind-flying instrumentation, typified by the gyro-stabilized artificial horizon, which, like radar later, was one of the few truly transforming instruments developed in the history of flight, for it made possible instrument-only (IFR) flight. Taken together with advances in the Federal airway system, the development of lightweight airborne radars, digital electronics, sophisticated communications, and radar-based and later satellite navigation, as well as access to up-to-date weather information, revolutionized civil and military air operations. Ironically, accident rates remained high, particularly among GA pilots flying single-pilot (SP) aircraft under IFR conditions. By the early 1980s, the National Transportation Safety Board was reporting that "SPIFR” accidents accounted for 79 percent of all IFR-related accidents, with half of these occurring during high-workload landing approaches, total­ing more than 100 serious accidents attributable to pilot error per year.[858] Analysis revealed five major problem areas: controller judgment and response, pilot judgment and response, Air Traffic Control (ATC) intra­facility and interfacility conflict, ATC-pilot communication, and IFR – VFR (instrument flight rules-visual flight rules) conflicts. Common to
all of these were a mix of human error, communications deficiencies, conflicting or complex procedures and rules, and excessive workload. In particular, NASA researchers concluded that "methods, techniques, and systems for reducing work load are drastically needed.”[859]

In the mid-1970s, NASA aeronautics planners had identified "design[ing] avionic systems to more effectively integrate the light air­plane with the air-space system” as a priority, with researchers at Ames Research Center evaluating integration avionic functions with the goal of producing a single system concept.[860] In 1978, faced with the challenge of rising SPIFR accidents, NASA Langley Research Center launched a SPIFR program, holding a workshop in August 1983 at Langley to review and evaluate the progress to date on SPIFR studies and to dis­seminate it to an industry, academic, and governmental audience. The SPIFR program studied in depth the interface of the pilot and airplane, looking at a variety of issues ranging from the tradeoffs between com­plex autopilots and their potential benefits to simulator utility. Overall, researchers found that "[b]ecause of the increase in air traffic and the more sophisticated and complex ground control systems handling this traffic, IFR flight has become extremely demanding, frequently tax­ing the pilot to his limits. It is rapidly becoming imperative that all the pilot’s sensory and manipulative skills be optimized in managing the air­craft systems”; hopefully, they reasoned, the rapid growth in computer capabilities could "enhance single-crewman effectiveness in future air­craft operations and automated ATC systems.”[861] Encouragingly, in part because of NASA research, a remarkable 41-percent decrease in overall GA accidents did occur from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s.[862]

However, all was not well. Indeed, a key goad stimulating NASA’s pur­suit of avionics technology to enhance flight safety (particularly weather safety) was the decline of American General Aviation. In the late 1970s, America’s GA aircraft industry reached the peak of its power: in 1978, manufacturers shipped 17,817 aircraft, and the next year, 1979, the top three manufacturers—Cessna, Beech, and Gates Learjet—had combined sales over $1.8 billion. It seemed poised for even greater success over the next decade. In fact, such did not occur, thanks largely to rapidly rising insurance costs added to aircraft purchase prices, a by-product of a "rash of product liability lawsuits against manufacturers stem­ming from aircraft accidents,” some frivolously alleging inherent design flaws in aircraft that had flown safely for previous decades. Rising air­craft prices cooled any ardor for new aircraft purchases, particularly of single-engine light aircraft (business aircraft sales were affected, but more slowly). Other factors also contributed, including a global reces­sion in the early 1980s, an increase in aircraft leasing and charter aircraft operations (lessening the need for personal ownership), and mergers within the aircraft industry that eliminated some production programs. The number of students taking flight instruction fell by over a third, from 150,000 in 1980 to 96,000 in 1994. That year, GA manufacturers produced just 928 aircraft, representing a production decline of almost 95 percent since the heady days of the late 1970s.[863]

The year 1994 witnessed both the near-extinction of American General Aviation and its fortuitous revival. At the nadir of its fortunes, relief, fortunately, was in hand, thanks to two initiatives launched by Congress and NASA. The first was the General Aviation Revitalization Act (GARA) of 1994, passed by Congress and signed into law in August that year by President William Jefferson Clinton.[864] GARA banned prod­uct liability claims against manufacturers later than 18 years after an aircraft or component first flew. By 1998, the 18-year provision could be applied to the large numbers of aircraft produced in the 1970s, bring­ing relief at last to manufacturers who had been so plagued by legal action that many had actually taken aircraft—including old classics such as the Cessna C-172—out of production.[865] It is not too strong to state that GARA saved the American GA industry from utter extinction, for it brought much needed stability and restored sanity to a litigation process that had gotten out of hand. Thus it constitutes the most signif­icant piece of American aviation legislation passed in the modern era.

But important as well was a second initiative, the establishment by NASA of the AGATE program, a joint NASA-industry-FAA partnership. AGATE existed thanks to the persistency of Bruce Holmes, the Agency’s Assistant Director of Aeronautics, who had vigorously championed it. Functionally organized within NASA’s Advanced Subsonic Technology Project Office, AGATE dovetailed nicely with GARA. It sought to revi­talize GA by focusing on innovative cockpit technologies that could achieve goals of safety, affordability, and ease of use, chief of which was the "Highway in the Sky” (HITS) initiative, which aimed to replace the dial-and-gauge legacy instrument technology of the 1920s with advanced computer-based graphical presentations. As well, it supported crashwor­thiness research. It served as well as single focal point to bring together NASA, industry, Government, and GA community representatives.

AGATE ran from 1994 through 2001, and a key aspect of its success was that it operated under a NASA-unique process, the Joint Sponsored Research Agreement (JSRA), a management process that streamlined research and internal management processes, while accelerating the results of technology development into the private sector. AGATE suf­fered in its early years from "learning problems” with internal communi­cation, with building trust and openness among industry partners more used to seeing themselves as competitors, and with managerial over­sight of its activities. Some participants were disappointed that AGATE never achieved its most ambitious objective, a fully automated aircraft. Others were bothered by the uncertainty of steady Federal support, a characteristic aspect of Federal management of research and develop­ment. But if not perfect—and no program ever is—AGATE proved vital to restoring GA, and as an end-of-project study concluded inelegantly if bluntly, "[a]ccording to participants from all parts of the program, AGATE revitalized an industry that had gone into the toilet.”[866]

The legacy of AGATE is evident in much of NASA’s subsequent avi­onics and cockpit presentation research, which, building upon earlier research, has involved improving a pilot’s situational awareness. Since weather-related accidents account for one-third of all aviation accidents and over one-quarter of all GA accidents, a particular concern is present­ing timely and informative weather information, for example, graphics overlaid on navigational and geographical cockpit displays.[867] Another area of acute interest is improving pilot controllability via advanced flight control technology to close the gap between an automobile-like 2-D control system and the traditionally more complex 3-D aircraft sys­tem and generating a HITS-like synthetic vision capability to enhance flight safety. This, too, is a longstanding concern, related to the handling qualities and flight control capabilities of aircraft so that the pilot can concentrate more on what is going on around the aircraft than having to concentrate on flying it.[868]