An operational safety and certification assessment of a TASAR EFB application

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of a Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Requests (TASAR) Electronic Flight Bag application intended to inform the pilot of trajectory improvement opportunities while en route that result in operational benefits. The results of safety analyses and a detailed review of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulatory documents that establish certification and operational approval requirements are presented for TASAR.The safety analyses indicate that TASAR has a likely Failure Effects Classification of "No Effect," and at most, is no worse than "Minor Effect." Based on this safety assessment and the detailed review of FAA regulatory documents that determine certification and operational approval requirements, this study concludes that TASAR can be implemented in the flight deck as a Type B software application hosted on a Class 2 Portable Electronic Device (PED) Electronic Flight Bag (EFB). This implementation approach would provide a relatively low-cost path to certification and operational approval for both retrofit and forward fit implementation, while at the same time facilitating the business case for early ADS-B IN equipage. A preliminary review by FAA certification and operational approvers of the analyses presented here confirmed that the conclusions are appropriate and that TASAR will be considered a Type B application.

A Cockpit-based Application for Traffic Aware Trajectory Optimization

“…This read-only access to avionics data allows for TAP to be classified as a system that has minor or no effect to safety-critical operations, further streamlining the process of FAA approval. 9,10 Since the Class 2 EFB is read-only, pilots will enter the TAP-proposed route changes into their FMS manually, as they do in current in-flight procedures.…”