Aircraft Turbulence Detection and Display from the Professional Pilot’s Perspective

The purpose of this study was to investigate the detection and display of weather avoidance information to commercial airline, business aircraft, and general aviation aircraft cockpits from the perspective of the professional pilot.

A flight campaign was conducted over a period of three years. Convective weather detection was attempted utilizing an experimental airborne weather radar installed on NASA’s Airborne Research Integrated Experiments Systems (ARIES) Boeing 757. Additionally ground-based Next Generation Radar (NEXRAD) information and textual data was linked to the aircraft for correlation. It was determined after encountering several heavy turbulence events that radar detection and conventional displays alone were inadequate to provide the types of data needed by the professional flight crew in order to make informed decisions concerning weather avoidance. The NASA King Air B200 and Cessna 206 were also used to evaluate the human factors issues concerning cockpit displays for these classes of aircraft, which are also flown by some professional pilots.

In addition to convective weather avoidance associated with thunderstorms or frontal activity, the study also explored clear air turbulence detection techniques. The detection of these events and the communication of this information to other aircraft in an automated Pilot Report format are being used to display danger areas to other pilots.