The Effect of Providing Automated Clear Air Turbulence Assessments to Commercial Airline Pilots

The current turbulence assessment and reporting system is subjective and depends on verbal communications on the radio. We prototyped a system that calculates and displays objective turbulence metrics. In a full motion simulator experiment, commercial airline pilots using objective turbulence metrics were able to provide significantly better passenger safety, flight attendant safety, and passenger comfort than those using the current convention. Pilots with displays of surrounding traffic's turbulence spent less time on the radio and made significantly better decisions with respect to passenger safety and passenger comfort than those relying on radio transmissions.