Volcanic ASH events: When the role of decision maker is assigned to a pilot

Abstract

The volcanic eruption that occurred in Iceland in April 2010 (the Eyjafjallajökull eruption) had an adversely impact on aviation in Europe. This event then spurred aviation key actors into action, so leading experts gathered up to, firstly, define issues that had to be solved and, secondly, to try to prepare aviation for the eventual volcanic ash event in future. The progress was already noticeable just a year later (in May 2011), when another volcanic eruption occurred in Iceland (the Grimsvötn eruption). At that time the impact on aviation was already much lower than in 2010. These days, we witness the development process in information exchange area and regulations area in Europe. EUROCONTROL established a new tool called EVITA which provides a better data exchange process in a volcanic ash event and civil aviation authorities among Europe developed a new regulation approach providing the possibility for airlines to be the part of the decision making process concerning the question whether to fly or not in the contaminated airspace. But is there a possibility to have an improvement in other areas, too? Can we progress towards the process of forecasting movements of an ash-cloud more precisely and using that information the improvement of operational efficiency while maintaining safety in a crisis period? What are the tools that we need for this purpose? Institute of Flight Guidance (DLR - German Aerospace Center) is currently working on a development of a new volcanic ash event concept in order to try to answer those questions. This concept is called “pilot in-charge” and connote that the role of the decision maker whether to fly or not should be assigned to a pilot. Development of this concept is at the end of its first phase (the objective and assessment of technical possibilities to achieve it are established). The final phase should be a development of FMS (back-up support system for pilots when there is a presence of an ash-cloud in the air) that is going to be able of proposing, planning and optimizing a flight path in-flight.