Get ready for a safe emergency landing with SafeNcy!
Since the end of 2019, FRACS, CGX AERO, METSAFE, UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA (UPC), ENAC and EUROCONTROL are working together to propose through SafeNcy an automated support the flight crew in the flight management and decision-making process during emergency situations with degraded aircraft capabilities.
Indeed, the goal of this safe emergency generator is to provide the analysis of possible landing options in classic and non-classic areas, as alternate airports and off-airport sites, depending on the situation. The system is capable of adapting the answer to the level of emergency: SafeNcy is able to make a ranking of the different landing options available as a function of the severity of the emergency and the availability of potential landing sites in the vicinity and provide the associated trajectory, while taking into account several parameters as the aircraft state, weather events, landing areas characteristics, airlines preferences, etc.
The early project phases of the project mobilised the whole team and focused on drafting the concept and perimeter to address, studying existing emergency procedures, on-board systems and the state of the art to define the first operational requirements. According to the agreed architecture, a landing site generation module has been developed to provide accurate inputs for the trajectory generation module. The first demonstrations performed in May 2021 provided positive and encouraging results, as validated by THALES, the Topic Manager for CLEANSKY 2.
The next steps will concern verification and validation activities, aiming to ensure thorough test of the integrated tool and validation of the different case studies. The tool will be updated throughout the project according to operational feedbacks from pilots, regulation requirements or safety recommendations.
With this initiative, the SafeNcy consortium aims at bringing tangible improvements for the management of emergency operations for the pilots, but also for the airlines operations control centres, the air traffic control centres and the Search and Rescue (SAR) operational units. New on-board functions for the cockpit of the future could also benefit from the operational reliability and increased level of safety brought by the tool.
Fasten your seatbelt and stay tuned for further insights!
This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 864771. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the Clean Sky 2 JU members other than the Union.
