Welcome to Atlanta

by Joy Finnegan | Oct 25, 2023 | BUZZ

We hope to see many new and familiar faces at our event, Aerospace Tech Week in Atlanta! If you are joining us here and reading this at the event, welcome! If you are receiving this magazine at home, please look ahead and consider attending our next event in Munich on April 17 and 18.

For those interested in learning about the latest in technology that can help airlines be more efficient, save money and be sustainable, or those working in the avionics, connectivity, MRO IT, flight ops IT, testing, MRO, MOSA/SOSA/FACE areas, this is the conference to attend.

At the show you will have access to multiple experts in these areas that will speak and share experiences from their operations and about their products and offerings. In this issue of Aerospace Tech Review, we also look at some of the same topics that will be covered at the show. One of those topics is cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity is or should be top of mind for all in aviation. Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and will likely become more devastating. Being prepared, as much as possible, is key.

Back in June, Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport in Louisiana experienced a cyberattack on its administration system as part of a larger attack by a ransomware group. Fortunately, flight operations were not affected. In April, the international cyber hacking group Anonymous Sudan claimed credit for website outages of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and UPS. Both websites were restored within a couple of hours, and both said there was no impact on operations.

In February, seven German airport websites including those for Dusseldorf, Nuremberg and Dortmund, were knocked offline by a cyberattack.

All of these folks got lucky and these are a few examples of the cyberattacks that target the aviation industry. But concerns about aircraft and their interconnected functions, interfaces and systems, including ground, in-flight and maintenance operations and related processes, are real. These incidents could impact safety, business operations and the company reputations.

Experts from around the world are quoted in our story on cybersecurity by Jim Romeo that touts planning and preparation to anticipate possible cybersecurity breaches as key to preventing or minimizing damage due to them. Cybersecurity awareness, standards and best practices are discussed in the article starting on page 20.

Also in this issue we have an update on blockchain use in aviation. Aviation and blockchain seem like a match made in heaven. Accuracy and integrity of data is crucial to aviation. Blockchain can potentially provide extremely efficient, digitized and incorruptible parts tracking, as well as many other applications. It promises to improve data security, reduce costs and increase the efficiency of processes.

How would blockchain be used in our aviation world? Recording the location of assets in real-time, providing information like flight path, baggage onboarding, tracking down a lost asset, passenger details are some of the ways.

More specifically, in the world of caring for and maintaining aircraft, the experts at consulting firm PwC say it can provide “a boost of power and efficiency” to the MRO side of the airline business. “A picture of each plane’s configuration and maintenance history, accurate up to the second, would make it easier to predict when serious maintenance issues could ground a plane, and to analyze its condition and diagnose potential issues during MRO,” PwC says.

Blockchain offers the promise of continuously updating the logs for each aircraft part’s condition. This could help reduce the time needed for the inspection and maintenance of aircraft. Blockchain may also assist in predictive maintenance efforts. MRO service providers can also use blockchain and provide verifiable documentation for the components they have serviced or installed.

Beyond all that, this technology can help automate payment processes, and improve the ease with which airlines can keep track of the entire life cycle of an aircraft, from the manufacturing process to maintenance and repair process, to end of life.

The experts say cybersecurity is built into blockchain technology because it is a decentralized system built on principles of security, privacy and trust. According to a Deloitte white paper, blockchain is a “promising innovation … towards helping enterprises tackle immutable cyber-risk challenges such as digital identities and maintaining data integrity.”

But the Deloitte paper cautions that, “blockchain’s characteristics do not provide an impenetrable panacea to all cyber ills, to think the same would be naïve at best. Instead, as with other technologies blockchain implementations and rollouts must include typical system and network cybersecurity controls, due diligence, practice and procedures.”

You can see our story on blockchain starting on page 40.

So whether you are joining us either in Atlanta, Munich or both, to learn more about areas of technology that could be so important to your business operations like cybersecurity and blockchain — welcome. We hope you also enjoy the many other areas we will be covering including avionics, connectivity, testing, flight operations IT, MRO IT or MOSA/SOSA/FACE. We look forward to hosting this event and creating the environment of learning, information sharing and provoking new avenues of thought about how to improve aviation and aerospace.

Fearmongering or Wake Up Call?

by Joy Finnegan | Aug 29, 2023 | BUZZ

In late August, The New York Times published an exposé called “Airline Close Calls Happen Far More Often Than Previously Known” by Sydney Ember and Emily Steel. The story purports that near-catastrophic events in commercial aviation are increasing. The article says the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) (also known to many in the aviation industry as the NASA reporting system because for many years that program has been overseen and monitored by NASA) has reports that indicate these events have more than doubled over the past decade.

Does the NYT article get it right? Or are they fearmongering? Perhaps we are just privy to more information than in years past, creating a sense that these events are increasing? The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was quick to respond, saying in a statement, “The U.S. aviation system is the safest in the world, but one close call is one too many. The FAA and the aviation community are pursuing a goal of zero serious close calls, a commitment from the Safety Summit in March. The same approach virtually eliminated the risk of fatalities aboard U.S. commercial airlines. Since 2009, U.S. carriers have transported more than the world’s population with no fatal crashes.”

Additionally, the FAA noted that data shows runway incursions are steadily decreasing and released a statement saying the FAA will hold runway safety meetings at approximately 90 airports between now and the end of September. “Sharing information is critical to improving safety,” said Tim Arel, chief operating officer of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization. “These meetings, along with other efforts, will help us achieve our goal of zero close calls.”

Whether or not the NYT or the FAA is more correct, one thing is certain. The flying public puts their trust in the air transportation system and deserves the safest possible system within the constraints of human frailty.

To gain more clarity on this report and our commercial aviation safety record, I spoke to aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti. Guzzetti is a 40-year aviation safety industry veteran having held leadership positions within the FAA, the NTSB, the Office of The Inspector General – Aviation and now as head of GuARD (Guzzetti Aviation Risk Discovery) and analyst for multiple news outlets.

I asked Guzzetti if these near-catastrophic events are truly increasing. “No,” Guzzetti said emphatically. “The article even says so, by quoting FAA statistics that, after a rise in 2013, the number has gone down since 2018 to now. … Also, runway incursions are classified as A, B, C, and D, with A being the ‘near-catastrophic’ ones, B being concerning and C and D being very minor. Most Class A events involve single-engine Cessnas and Pipers, not airliners. Class A events involving airliners have not increased.”

I asked him if the NYT article get some things right and he agreed that “their facts are correct, but their cherry-picked NASA ASRS narratives and quotes from disgruntled ATC controllers do not provide a balanced or nuanced description of the current situation.” In many cases, we are privy to more information than years past, creating a sense that these events are increasing.

The article’s authors say the ATM system is “a safety net under mounting stress.” But Guzzetti stated that he thinks the aviation safety net is constantly under varying levels and types of stress and that this is nothing new. “For example, using satellite-based navigation and glass cockpits has significantly lessened the stress on the safety net over the years (compared to ADF approaches with steam gauges), but new challenges like increasing air travel, a temporary shortage of controllers and a pilot shortage have replaced that stress to some degree.”

Next, I asked Guzzetti about staffing levels in the air traffic control system. He pointed to a Department of Transportation Office of the Inspector General report, “FAA Faces Controller Staffing Challenges as Air Traffic Operations Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels at Critical Facilities” that says, “The FAA has made limited efforts to ensure adequate controller staffing at critical air traffic control facilities. The agency also has yet to implement a standardized scheduling tool to optimize controller scheduling practices at these facilities, and FAA officials disagree on how to account for trainees when determining staffing numbers. As a result, the FAA continues to face staffing challenges and lacks a plan to address them, which in turn poses a risk to the continuity of air traffic operations.”

The NYT article says current and former ATC controllers said, “close calls were happening so frequently that they feared it was only a matter of time until a deadly crash occurred.” But this is purely anecdotal and Guzzetti points to the lack of hard evidence in the statement. “I don’t believe it. This statement is truly fearmongering! Did every controller they talked to say this? I doubt it,” Guzzetti said.

The article also says ASRS reports have more than doubled. But Guzzetti questions what facts the authors based this statement on. “Are they referring to all NASA reports? Or just ones from airline pilots who report near misses? Pilots notoriously over-exaggerate these types of occurrences because it is hard to accurately perceive distances and flight dynamics. The rule of thumb at the NTSB for comparing DFDR data with pilot comments was a three-to-one ratio (i.e., “we were in a 90-degree bank!” when the DFDR indicated 35 degrees),” he said.

When asked what else needs visibility in aviation safety, Guzzetti pointed to several areas including the lack of a permanent, strong, qualified FAA administrator, causing a decrease in morale, support and stability of the FAA workforce; FAA employee brain-drain due to retirements and a lack of adequate respect and incentives to recruit the next generation of inspectors and engineers; lack of an adequate budget to fund new technology; and the significant mechanic shortage.

Guzzetti had more to say, and his full comments will be included in the online content on our website and you can see them here. He will also be presenting at our Aerospace Tech Week Americas event in Atlanta on November 14-15.