One third of air accidents in the past year occurred partially due to meteorological threats according to the IATA Safety Report 2014. With this alarmingly high number in mind, the weather factor cannot and should not be ignored. In fact, it is becoming the next major frontier in the struggle to enhance aviation safety. Two events organised by EUROCONTROL and EASA last month illustrate the efforts to improve the access, the quality and the management of meteorological information available in the cockpit to pilots to make well-informed decisions for flight safety and efficiency purposes.

The EUROCONTROL Weather Resilience Forum (21-22 Oct) focused on proactively managing weather’s impact on performance. Severe weather indisputably affects operations: it has an impact on flight efficiency and leads to major flight delays.

The EASA workshop on Weather Information provided to Pilots (28-29 Oct) examined the potential safety benefits from providing enhanced weather information to pilots in the cockpit. This is a key principle that pilots have underlined in the past: Continuous access to meteorological information, available on the ground and in the air is a must. Despite the pace at which new technology is invading the skies, pilots still struggle with often outdated meteorological data in black and white, provided to them in difficult to read formats. Outlined in ECA’s publication, Pilots’ vision on weather, the following key principles were also brought up during these two events:

» Weather information must be displayed in easy to grasp graphical form;

» Weather graphics must make use of colour to highlight important phenomena;

» Real-time advanced radar and satellite pictures with flight path should be available, continuously updated forecasts that have 3 hrs or less between forecast times, continuously updated;

» Pilot-selectable, specialised weather information for special situations must be accessible, i.e. tropical systems, high winds, volcanic eruptions, winter weather, fog;

» Playback capability for all information.
 

For more information download the ECA Publication.