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.

Traffic Aware Planner for Cockpit-based Trajectory Optimization

“…2,3 Since 2012, NASA has been developing and testing the TASAR concept with the goal of providing an application that could be used by operators in the current-day NAS to optimize their flights. Early activities have included a formal definition of the concept 12 , an assessment of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification and operational approval requirements, 13,14 and a preliminary benefits analysis. The results of the benefits analysis indicated that aircraft equipped with TASAR capabilities could reduce flight travel time from one to four minutes and fuel burn by 50 to 550 pounds.…”

“…This read-only access to avionics data allows TAP to be classified as a system that has minor or no effect to safety-critical operations, further streamlining the process of FAA approval. 13,14 The TAP system has been developed to operate on a variety of EFB platforms and test configurations (See Fig. 2) using a single code base:…”

Achieving TASAR Operational Readiness

“…The analysis was documented and presented in 2013 12 and further documented in 2015. 13 These references identify 17 regulations, standards, and guideline documents that were reviewed for this analysis, many of which relate to the design and installation of EFB hardware and associated software applications.…”

“…8,11,12,13 Two safety assessment methodologies compliant with the FAA's Safety Management System were used to determine the Failure Effects Classification (FEC) of TASAR. Method 1, based on ARP 4761 [14], AC 23-1309 [15] and AC 25-1309 [16] for Part 23 and Part 25 aircraft operations, is a traditional system safety process for airborne systems, e.g., TASAR.…”

Traffic Aware Planner (TAP) Flight Evaluation

“…The primary purpose for flight-testing TAP was to bridge the critical divide between Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 (testing in a laboratory environment) and TRL 6 (testing in a relevant environment), as a steppingstone to full operational deployment (TRL 9). Since the TASAR concept is intended to provide near-term operational benefits, NASA has undertaken a number of activities to accelerate its adoption by the operator community: NASA has analyzed the potential user benefits 4 , the operational hazards 5 , and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification and operational approval requirements 5 for TASAR. NASA has developed the TAP software application and has evaluated the human-machine interface (HMI) in a high-fidelity fixed-base flight simulator during a human-in-the-loop experiment with active airline pilots 6 .…”