The Operational Issue of an Airliner’s Reduced-Crew Caused by Data-link Break-up to Remote Support

Different operational concepts for Single-Pilot and Reduced-Crew Operations (RCO) in commercial aviation include a ground based supportive component of a remote-copilot. The impact of an outage and break-up of the data-link connecting air and ground has not been investigated yet. Social Network Analysis (SNA) in combination with a Cognitive Work Analysis was used to compare the three crewing options of multi-crew, reduced-crew and a break-up of data-link in RCO in terms of social factors and interactions. A data-link loss decreased the networks density and its resilience to any off-nominal and emergency situations. The single-pilot suffers from higher functional loadings, is located more central and processes a higher information flow. A twofold degraded operational procedure was proposed to mitigate an outage and loss of data-link in combination with additional automation tools onboard. Nonetheless, further research is required to provide a data-link with a big bandwidth as reliable and secure as possible.

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