Soaring Toward Tomorrow: Ensuring Safety in Evolving Skies
By NASA’s System-Wide Safety Project Management Office
NASA appreciates the opportunity to work alongside ALPA to take Association members and Air Line Pilot readers deeper into some of our many NASA aeronautics safety efforts and how those efforts affect the airline pilot, both now and in the future. NASA’s mission for its System-Wide Safety (SWS) Project is to identify and address new safety needs within our safe and secure airspace system before those needs become challenges. As NASA’s aeronautics safety R&D project, SWS seeks aviation and airspace transformation through the convergence of economic, environmental, and safety technologies. Commercial aviation contributes an estimated $1.4 trillion in economic impact and benefits the public in myriad ways. SWS helps ensure that critical air transportation systems and infrastructures continue to advance and unlock new benefits while furthering and improving the safety performance of the national airspace system (NAS). This is made possible through collaboration with our valued partners, including ALPA and its more than 79,000 airline pilots.
NASA and ALPA have established a long-standing and productive partnership. The primary objective of this joint effort is to safely advance the aviation industry. By integrating our respective knowledge and resources, NASA and ALPA are committed to fostering improved airline safety (in other words, your safety).
In future Air Line Pilot articles, we’ll explore together the future of air travel by examining cutting-edge innovations in technologies, aircraft, and operational concepts, all through a safety-focused lens. These articles will include how ALPA members are pivotal in shaping research findings by providing access to subject-matter expertise and invaluable insights on the realities of day-to-day operations. They’ll cover topics such as next-generation Safety Management Systems, the challenges with advanced technology that need to be overcome, and updates on our efforts to better understand fatigue and human performance. We’ll explore technology’s place in commercial airline aviation; it will not supplant pilots but further enable them to do what they do better than any machine—being adaptive, resilient, creative, intuitive, and resourceful.
Human beings can’t yet tell the future, but two things are certain: technology will advance, and aviation safety must advance right alongside. Since 1915 and the first meeting of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), safety has been an inherent part of aircraft R&D. The collaborative spirit that led to NACA’s founding continues to prioritize public-private partnerships to advance commercial aviation safety. These continued partnerships with airlines and safety organizations are and will continue to be critical to effectively addressing the future of aviation safety. NASA’s partnership with ALPA, the largest nongovernmental safety organization in the world, is pivotal to advancing that shared safety vision.
Today, the NASA Aeronautics Strategic Implementation Plan (2023) guides our efforts to advance key transformations that the aviation industry has helped identify to meet the anticipated needs of the operators of the future air transportation system. Some innovations will ensure efficiency, such as ultraefficient aircraft that reduce fuel burn and operating costs. Others will look at new operational concepts, such as dynamic trajectory-based operations and low-boom supersonic commercial transport aircraft. New markets and aircraft types are emerging at an unprecedented pace. The integration of electric vertical takeoff and landing passenger air taxis for advanced air mobility is a hot topic, as are commercial space launch and reentry operations. Safety risk management, of course, will be the critical gatekeeper on advancing these operations.
The future transformed airspace, as airline pilots are well aware, will be increasingly complex, and ensuring continually improving safety performance is a multifaceted challenge. It’s also an excellent, transformational opportunity. New technologies and capabilities could increase access and mobility and promote economic growth, but these promises will be fleeting if safety isn’t fundamentally prioritized and ensured. However, as we push the boundaries of innovation, increasing NAS complexity will demand even more attention to safety to sustain these advancements and enable novel operations that benefit airlines and all airspace users.
While our current system is ultrasafe, it isn’t scalable to meet the anticipated increases in diversity, volume, density, and complexity. NAS safety tools, methods, and capabilities must transform to become more collaborative, digitally interconnected, interoperative, tailored, agile, dynamic, service-oriented, and performance-based.
At NASA, we never forget why aviation has long been the safest mode of transportation—the human contribution to safety. Your dedication, professionalism, and commitment to safety is demonstrated daily. People, especially pilots, actually create safety. As we anticipate changes in the air transportation system, our shared and overarching goal remains to ensure that the ultramodern system maintains its unparalleled safety standard.
We don’t design new aircraft, advanced technology, or airspace procedures; we do, however, make breakthroughs in the development of methods to verify, validate, and certify their safety. Our focus is on enhancing airspace resilience and scalability to better anticipate, monitor, assess, and mitigate threats before they develop into risks. When NASA and airlines share data and other contextual information, we’re all more effective, efficient, and safe. By improving aviation safety data sources, more predictive analytical methods, and interconnectedness, we can enable better monitoring, prediction, and prognostic capabilities. The output of these capabilities can then be provided straight to you as an invaluable awareness tool as you embark on your daily operations.
We extend our deepest gratitude to ALPA pilots for their outstanding professionalism and unwavering dedication to safety. You make the air transportation system the safest mode of travel. We also invite you to participate with NASA in shaping a shared vision for the future of aviation that can safely bring the vision to reality. On behalf of our SWS team, we appreciate this opportunity to share a few examples of our collaborative safety R&D work with ALPA members and Air Line Pilot readers.
Shared Safety Vision: Collaborating for the Future
By Capt. Steve Jangelis (Delta), Chair, ALPA Aviation Safety Group
We’re pleased to announce that ALPA’s Air Safety Organization (ASO) and NASA are once again working together to provide a series of articles in Air Line Pilot focused on advancing safety. Our goal is to educate our members on the work being done within the industry and to constantly push safety improvements forward.
Safety doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and our initiatives, lessons learned, and experiences provide the highest value when they’re shared widely throughout the industry. We must all work together to ensure a safe airspace system, as there’s no competition when it comes to safety.
ALPA pilots play a pivotal role in the development of an intelligent safety system. We provide critical contextual information regarding how aviation functions in practice. Without our contribution to long-standing voluntary safety programs such as the Aviation Safety Action Program and Flight Operational Quality Assurance, the safety monitoring systems that the FAA and industry rely on to make data-driven decisions wouldn’t exist.
NASA’s efforts to address the safety challenges of tomorrow through its System-Wide Safety Project are no different and require an industry partnership with pilot input to create robust safety analyses and technologies.
The articles prepared by NASA researchers will be accompanied by articles regarding ALPA’s involvement and technical influence within the industry. Within our ASO, we have hundreds of knowledgeable volunteers dedicating their time and resources to ensuring safety across different aviation domains.
These subject-matter experts diligently provide input on various projects that ultimately impact the day-to-day operations of each of our members. It’s imperative that we continue to work alongside government and industry to ensure that the line-pilot perspective is heard in rooms where safety decisions are made.
