Pilot3

The project

Pilots should have on board a better understanding of the stakes of the current mission considering the business objectives of their airline.

Flight crew should ensure adherence to performance criteria, in line with the airline’s objectives.

Pilot3, an Innovative Action within the frame of Clean Sky 2 ITD System, will develop a software engine model to provide this required extra support by performing multi-criteria optimisation considering:

The types of performance the airline are seeking
Translating these performance targets into high level objectives
Providing a rank of alternatives to the crew considering these objectives

Pilot3 focuses on the tactical management of the flight, Dispatcher3, a CleanSky 2 Innovation Action, focuses on the optimisation of the flight prior departure by applying machine learning techniques to the flight dispatching processes.

Watch Pilot3 video teaser!

Watch a 5′ video on Pilot3

Pilot3 at a glance

When disruption occurs, Pilot3 will provide a set of alternative trajectories to the pilot with information to help them to select the most suitable one considering multi-criteria business objectives of the airline.

Pilot3 will provide the capability to explicitly estimate the impact of each alternative with respect to the airline’s performance targets. Pilot3 will integrate airlines’ flight policies and consider the overall performance (in the whole network).

Pilot3 comprises five sub-systems:

Alternatives Generator, which will compute the different alternatives to be considered by the pilot; fed by the two independent sub-systems:
- Performance Indicators Estimator, which provides the Alternatives Generator with information on how to estimate the impact of each solution for the different performance indicators (PIs);
- Operational ATM Estimator, which provides the Alternative Generator with information on how to estimate some operational aspects such as tactical route amendments, expected arrival procedure, holding time in terminal airspace, distance flown (or flight time spent) in terminal airspace due to arrival sequencing and merging operations, or taxi-in time;
Performance Assessment Module, which, considering the expected results for each alternative on the different KPIs, is able to filter and rank the alternatives considering airlines and pilots preferences; and
Human Machine Interface, which will present these alternatives to the pilot and allow them to interact with the system.

Pilot3 will contribute to the capture and definition of flight policies and allow airlines to define enriched flight policies.

Development approach

Close coordination with stakeholders and with the Topic Manager (Thales) are key to ensure that Pilot3 delivers a suitable solution. An Advisory Board formed by airlines and experts has been set up and will help to steer the project in the right direction.

The project will start with the formalisation of the requirements and case studies to be tested. Then, Pilot3 will consider state-of-the-art multi-criteria decision making optimisation techniques, review them and select the most suitable ones to be implemented.

Two prototype versions will be generated and you will be able to provide feedback to us on the first version on a dedicated workshop!