New tool analyzes black-box data for flight anomalies
Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office Posted by- Neelam Mathews Sept 12, 2011 Many airlines routinely run software programs to check a plane’s overall health and performance after each flight. However, John Hansman, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, says today’s search methods are limited, with operators needing to identify ahead of time which parameters to check. Hansman says this approach may cause analysts to miss key information that would otherwise help airlines improve aircraft safety and operations. An airplane’s digital flight-data recorder, or “black box,” holds massive amounts of data, documenting the performance of engines, cockpit controls, hydraulic equipment and GPS systems, typically at regular one-second intervals throughout a flight. More recently, analysts have probed black-box data in an effort to prevent such accidents from ever occurring. Now Hansman and his colleagues at MIT and in Spain have devised a...