Emerging Hazards in Commercial Aviation—Report 1: Initial Assessment of Safety Data and Analysis Processes (2022)

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77 This chapter summarizes proposed changes within the aviation industry through the introduction of new technologies and types of operations, and the potential stressors on the industry, that may create new emerging hazards, as well as strategies for continuously monitoring these and other potential hazards over the course of the study. Specifically, strategic fore- casting techniques, horizon scanning and scenario planning, are described as a set of qualitative approaches to broaden the identification of com- mercial aviation safety issues. This chapter notes potential sources of new emerging trends in aviation safety that such techniques may be applied to evaluate. POTENTIAL SOURCES OF NEW EMERGING TRENDS IN AVIATION SAFETY Over the course of several briefings from the Federal Aviation Adminis- tration (FAA), aviation organizations, and experts in the United States and abroad, the committee has developed a preliminary list of sources of potential emerging aviation safety hazards. A primary focus is on the iden- tification of potential changes that create systemic stressors on the broader aviation system of hazard controls, either by increasing pressure on some of these controls or by undermining the assumptions that they are based on. This is not to imply that the topics on this list are creating hazards that require immediate mitigation. Rather, in future reports, the committee will consider how well these potential sources, and others we may identify, are being examined by FAA, industry, researchers, and others for the hazards 5 Potential Emerging Aviation Safety Hazards and Future Identification

78 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION—REPORT 1 that may emerge, and the types of analysis and precursor measures required to manage them; where no specific entity is in place to conduct such analy- sis, the committee may explore and demonstrate how techniques such as horizon scanning can be applied to examine them. Safety Management of Increasingly Complex Systems Some of these potential emerging hazards relate to the increasing complexity of the overall system of aviation operations, and in particular the software- based systems that human operators are expected to employ and monitor. Of note, on the front line, the increasing levels of automation and sophistication of displays to inform pilots create a complexity impacting how well pilots can understand and interact with them. Increasing automation, and increas- ingly complex automation, can be opaque to pilots even during normal operation where pilots have the responsibility to continuously monitor their behavior and, at any moment, intervene and take back manual control or reconfigure the automation. These difficulties are compounded in flight conditions beyond the assumptions used by designers of the automation (Performance-based Operations Rulemaking Committee and Commercial Aviation Safety Team Flight Deck Automation Working Group, 2013; Sarter and Woods, 1992). Also related is the growing reliance on ever-more-sophisticated software for operating aircraft, the challenges of validating it, and ensuring that ver- sions and updates are current and software is performing as intended. The ever-increasing dependence of the aviation system on software for opera- tions and safety reinforces current efforts to provide effective cybersecurity. New Entrants The commercial aviation system may also be confronted by potential “new entrants” into the system, such as remotely operated drones, commercial space travel, commercial supersonic flights, and, potentially, new classes of small air taxi aircraft. These aircraft have different flight characteristics compare to aircraft used for air transport and, according to some proposed business models, create areas or corridors with high traffic density. The hazards posed by new entrants have not escaped notice and attention. FAA has been engaged in regulating how to manage the introduction of drones into the NAS for several years (NASEM, 2018). There are already proce- dures in place for managing space launches, but domestic launches require reallocation of large segments of the airspace that is heavily in demand, and the increasing frequency of launches, and particularly re-entries, may pose new hazards. FAA is already in the process of certifying a wide range of air taxi aircraft and will then have to determine how to integrate these

EMERGING AVIATION SAFETY HAZARDS AND FUTURE IDENTIFICATION 79 aircraft which have very different speeds, weights, and flight trajectories into the airspace around airports that was designed around the maneuver- ing capabilities of conventional commercial aircraft. Climate Change A different class of potential emerging hazards is related to climate change and policies to respond to it. One example of this is the growing potential for increasingly severe weather events, which has always been a factor for air traffic management and for protecting aircraft against weather factors such as icing. The combination of increasing traffic density and weather events that may develop more rapidly and across wider areas than accom- modated by current day processes may require the ability to (a) adapt the management of hundreds of aircraft in flight in new ways and (b) improve the existing weather identification, forecast, and warning systems relied on by pilots and dispatchers, and protection for aircraft against adverse condi- tions such as icing, windshear, and lightning. Another element of this could be climate-related policies to increase emphasis on conserving fuel burn and the use of alternative fuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The use of alternative fuels alone requires new supply chain and dispensing systems across the nation, with potential safety concerns when, for example, an aircraft is diverted to an airport with a different fuel supply than compatible with the aircraft’s systems, and in monitoring which fuels are dispensed to which aircraft and the subsequent maintenance inspections that may be required. More substantially, future sustainable aircraft may use a range of different energy sources, alone or as hybrid boosts to very efficient jet engines optimized for cruise. Proposals include the use of hydrogen directly or to generate electricity, batteries for electric power, and other systems which would require new methods of handling and fueling (or charging) aircraft on the ground. These present myriad concerns with the aircraft design, and then operational concerns. New Business Models Commercial aviation depends on private companies as operators and manu- facturers. It is a highly competitive enterprise. The businesses can be labor intensive, with the largest involving tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of employees, who are often working in locations dispersed across the country and internationally. In recent decades the operations of both carriers and manufacturers were heavily oriented around engineering. As methods for the management of the engineering challenges have become established, there is the possibility that the expertise of the top management of these organizations becomes even more oriented around financial management

80 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION—REPORT 1 and less on engineering and management of the complex systems of safety controls and design and operating assumptions that they are based on, reflecting a form of organization drift. The subtlety of such shifts can also be challenging for the regulator to identify because they would affect orga- nizational management decisions that have direct and indirect consequences on safety that may not manifest for some time. New entrants—both manufacturers and operators—may bring new business models that have limited corporate expertise in aviation in gen- eral, and managing aviation safety in particular. Within the United States, the rise of low-cost carriers has increased competition and, in some cases, raised concerns. Complicating any view of aviation safety within the United States alone, corporations and their subsidiaries, suppliers, and code-shares can be global in reach. Carriers may operate within the U.S. aircraft that were designed, certified, and manufactured abroad; aircraft and supporting technologies manufactured in the United States may be operated abroad. The increasing prevalence of both foreign manufacturers and air carriers in countries without a significant history in aviation creates competing business models and new markets beyond those traditionally assumed in western, affluent countries. Historically, many personnel in commercial aviation received their original training in the military, notably including pilots entering commer- cial service with extensive experience in both “normal” operations and in a handling a variety of upset or abnormal conditions. Even as demand for commercial pilots is increasing, the pipeline of pilots leaving military ser- vice is not.1 This reflects another potential impetus for changes in business models in which finding and training suitable personnel increases in diffi- culty and cost, relative to concerns noted earlier with increasing complexity demanding pilot ability to both understand and effectively manage complex flight systems and, equally important, have the fundamental piloting skills to operate the aircraft without its assistance when it malfunctions or in flight conditions beyond its capacity. New Technologies Technologies used by the aviation industry are constantly evolving. In many cases, these new technologies are developed outside aviation, and then the aviation industry, rather than understanding them from their inception, seeks to implement capabilities that may not fit within their established methods for safety analysis and management. For example, lithium-ion 1 The commercial airline shortage of former military pilots traces to a chronic shortage of military pilots combined with the rapid expansion of commercial airline operations in response to growing demand. See Taylor et al. (2000) and Crouch (2020).

EMERGING AVIATION SAFETY HAZARDS AND FUTURE IDENTIFICATION 81 batteries were added to commercial aircraft without fully understanding how different their required quality assurance and failure modes are from the battery types traditionally used in aviation; indeed, concerns continue with the transport of lithium-ion batteries as cargo. As another example, the potential for additive manufacturing will introduce not only new materials, but also structural shapes that were never possible with traditional manu- facturing methods. Thus, they may require a new science of how they will behave in high-stress situations and how they will age; current standards and methods may not apply for design, testing and evaluation, certification, production (including quality assurance during manufacturing), and ongo- ing maintenance and inspection. Even when new systems are implemented to improve safety, they may have unintended side effects. Thus, methods may also be required to ex- amine new technologies around concerns with complexity: both their own complexity, and how they contribute to the broader complexity of the entire system, including its operation. FUTURE COMMITTEE ACTIVITIES AND REPORTS The committee plans to further examine methods and data for identifying and characterizing emerging trends in aviation safety over the course of this study. These activities will focus on where across the entire system the com- mittee determines it can provide the greatest insight. Most of the analyses reported to the committee by FAA and other entities focused on aviation safety have focused on immediate-time-frame concerns within flight opera- tions via the operations of the Commercial Aviation Safety Team and Aviation Safety Information and Analysis Sharing and ongoing monitoring within air carriers. Thus, the committee is also interested in learning more about other front-line operations which are believed to contribute to, and actively provide controls against, immediate time-frame concerns. These in- clude both maintenance and operations within the Air Traffic Organization within FAA providing air traffic control and air traffic management func- tions. We also anticipate exploring the processes in place internationally to measure, monitor, and analyze emerging safety trends and the amount of international cooperation that exists in this regard. A closer examination of FAA’s delegation of authority for safety certification, commercial pilot workforce trends, and workforce training strategies are additional areas of interest for future committee activities. The committee is not aware of significant efforts looking at new haz- ards beyond those already identified, as may emerge in the future time frame. Thus, the committee plans to engage in horizon scanning, including workshops that engage industry and academic experts in processes intended

82 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION—REPORT 1 to tease out and debate additional potential emerging hazards based on expert judgment, as described in more detail in the next section. An additional element of the committee’s task is to “draw on the results of FAA’s annual internal safety culture assessments and also advise the agency on data and approaches for assessing safety culture to ensure that FAA is identifying emerging risks to commercial aviation and sharing that informa- tion throughout the agency and with the public.” This task refers specifically to the annual safety culture assessment that Congress required the FAA Avia- tion Safety office to conduct following the two crashes of Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft in Indonesia and Ethiopia. FAA progress on this front is described in Chapter 3, but the first safety culture survey will not be conducted until later this year. Hence, we plan to report more completely on this subject in the next report. SCANNING FOR EMERGING AVIATION SAFETY TRENDS New future time-frame approaches may be required to identify new hazards that could impact commercial aviation safety in the coming decades. To this end, in the following phase of the study the committee intends to employ horizon scanning to examine some aspect of one or more of the stressors on, and proposed changes within, commercial aviation in the future. Horizon scanning is a term for a collection of strategic foresight activities that aim to improve the capabilities of organizations to prepare for an uncer- tain and complex future. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development describes the purpose of the exercise as follows: Horizon-scanning is aimed at detecting early signs of potentially important developments. These can be weak (or early) signals, trends, wild cards or other developments, persistent problems, risks and threats, including matters at the margins of current thinking that challenge past assumptions. (OECD, 2017) The scanning exercise involves a qualitative-but-structured approach to enable people and organizations to systematically detect early signs of potentially important developments. The scan seeks input from participants with a variety of perspectives on and expertise about the system under analysis. The participants are guided on strategies to manage cognitive biases to uncover blind spots and examine weak signals that could bring about potential change. The scan is intended to generate new ideas, which are often found at the margins of current thinking and may challenge con- ventional wisdom. In a horizon scan, a signal is defined as a small or local innovation or disruption with the potential to grow in scale and reach (Institute for the

EMERGING AVIATION SAFETY HAZARDS AND FUTURE IDENTIFICATION 83 Future, 2011). Signals are not synonymous with trends or indicators, but rather they can identify possible trends on the margin of a system rather than at its core. Traditionally, horizon scanning is used to inform decision makers about emerging trends and developments external to the organization (Habegger, 2009). For example, a horizon scan was conducted to identify potential future insider threats to the U.S. defense workforce. In this case, issues pertaining directly to cybersecurity and digitization were already under examination; however, the scan revealed that climate change could also influence insider threats through emotional and mental health impacts on people stemming from the disruptions and dislocations of climate change (Institute for the Future, 2020). While the strength and nature of the rela- tionship between climate change impacts and insider threats could not be gauged, the scan suggested that this is an area warranting some degree of monitoring by officials and organizations concerned about insider threats. In the next phase of the study, committee members will use hori- zon scanning to identify some of the potential stressors to, and changes within, commercial aviation identified earlier in this chapter. While this activity will potentially identify previously unidentified or overlooked trends in commercial aviation safety, the primary aim will be to demon- strate a method that can be broadly applied to identify such emerging trends in aviation safety. REFERENCES Crouch, V. 2020. Analysis of the airline pilot shortage. Scientia et Humanitas: A Journal of Student Research (10). Habegger, B. 2011. Horizon scanning in government: Concept, country experiences, and models for Switzerland. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Horizon-Scanning-in-Government%3A- Concept%2C-Country-Habegger/c01221d8a2f64e6bc36b1ea4b961325f06a3f3c3. Institute for the Future. 2011. IFTF research methodology: Signal scanning. https://www.iftf. org/future-now/article-detail/iftf-research-methodology-signal-scanning. Institute for the Future. 2020. Moving upstream 2030. Protecting the DoD workforce against future insider threats. https://www.iftf.org/fileadmin/user_upload/images/ourwork/ digintel/ IFTF_Upstream2030.pdf. NASEM (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine). 2018. Assessing the Risks of Integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems into the National Airspace System. The National Academies Press. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). 2017. The next produc- tion revolution: Implications for government and business. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/ sites/9789264271036-13-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/9789264271036-13-en. Performance-based Operations Rulemaking Committee and Commercial Aviation Safety Team Flight Deck Automation Working Group. 2013. Operational Use of Flight Path Manage- ment Systems. Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation.

84 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION—REPORT 1 Sarter, N., and D. Woods. 1992. Pilot interaction with cockpit automation: Operational experiences with flight management systems. The International Journal of Aviation Psychology 2(4):303–321. Taylor, W., S. Moore, and C. Roll. 2000. The Air Force Pilot Shortage: A Crisis for Opera- tional Units? RAND.