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Abstract

The Partnership to Enhance General Aviation Safety, Accessibility and Sustainability (PEGASAS) is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Center of Excellence for General Aviation. The mission of PEGASAS is to enhance general aviation safety, accessibility, and sustainability by partnering the FAA with a national network of world-class researchers, educators, and industry leaders. Weather information devices currently used in the general aviation aircraft market are highly advanced and provide detailed and timely meteorological information to pilots. Upon its introduction, it was expected that this technology would lead to a decrease in weather related accidents, but that has not been the case. When pilots encounter unforeseen extreme weather conditions, they are encouraged to report the hazard in order to warn other planes that may be in the area to take a different route. This system fails when the method used to report takes the pilot’s attention away from the dangerous conditions outside. This can lead to pilots choosing to not report bad weather in order to fully focus on flying, or they report the conditions and risk the safety of their own flight. An Automatic speech recognition (ASR) system could allow pilots to fill-out the meticulous report form, without taking their eyes off the sky to complete it manually. However, this process is not without issues. Noise in the cockpit and bias of the system can cause inaccurate reporting. This can potentially lead to other planes not knowing what truly lies ahead or to prepare for incorrect conditions, making air traffic in the area less safe, due to pilots contending with unexpected circumstances. Ultimately, bad process output causes pilots to have to manually correct their flights near weather problems, which the system was put in place to avoid in the first place. This project’s overall goal is to attempt incorporating weather technology in the cockpit research into FAA standards documents and improve pilot decision making with respect to adverse weather conditions.

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