Turbulence is the leading cause of injuries in the aviation industry today. In addition to the human costs, airlines have numerous unplanned operational and maintenance costs associated with turbulence encounters.
To help mitigate these problems and costs, AeroTech has developed, with NASA support, a system to automate the current methods of manual (or aural) turbulence pilot reports (PIREPs) that will increase both pilot and ground controller situational awareness of the location and severtity of turbulence hazards.
A large contributing factor to the injuries and unplanned costs caused by turbulence encounters is that pilots (commercial, corporate, and private), dispatchers, and controllers do not have sufficient situational awareness of the location and severity of potential turbulence hazards to their aircraft.
AeroTech's Turbulence Auto-PIREP System (TAPS) is an autonomous system that provides objective reports of aircraft turbulence encounters in an effort to improve pilots' and dispatchers' situational awareness of potential turbulence hazards without increasing crew workload. Reports are generated during a turbulence encounter and broadcast to a ground station. These reports could represent an automated electronic pilot report (PIREP) providing important information about the turbulence encounter for either Airline Flight Safety and Operations Centers and/or Air Traffic Control (ATC) personnel to make strategic or tactical decisions.
TAPS Today
AeroTech’s TAPS reporting code has been installed on over 180 aircraft (B-737-800, B-767-300ER, B-767-400ER, A318, and A319) from Delta Air Lines and Frontier Airlines. The aircraft have been broadcasting turbulence reports in revenue service. The reports have been made from throughout the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, India, and the North Atlantic. Recognizing the importance to the forecast community, an estimation of eddy dissipation rate (EDR) was added to the TAPS data stream in 2005.
Please click on the links at the top of the page to find out more on TAPS and how it can reduce injuries and unplanned costs in your organization.
View "Turbulence Auto-PIREP System: An Overview" (1.4 MB .PDF)
View "Using Airborne Turbulence Detection & Reporting Technologies to Increase Airspace Utilization" (1.41 MB .PDF).
View "Improving Airport Take-Off and Landing Efficiency: EDR - A Key Component" (644 KB .PDF).
