“Do you need any help with your bags,” I asked Charlie Precourt, CJP’s safety committee chairman.
“Maybe, but first I need to check my FOQA (Flight Operational Quality Assurance) scores,” he replied as the door to his CJ1+ opened. Charlie had just landed in Wichita and wanted to ensure his landing performance was up to snuff.
There’s a sea change happening in the single pilot community, and it’s all about data.
The folks at TBMOPA, the owner group for TBM’s, started the effort in 2017 to track landing mishaps. Then MMOPA, the PA-46 owner group, joined the fray, and many more followed. Charlie used his NASA experience with four shuttle launches to stimulate his quest to improve the accident rate in Citations.
Almost three years ago, CJP corralled ten owners to install small collection devices from AirSync tied into Citation data busses. A wealth of in-flight information was always there, but retrieving it quickly and cheaply was not.
Almost 100 parameters are recorded every second, like true airspeed, bank angle, G forces, you name it. Charlie worked with his safety committee to decide which data was most meaningful. Consulting with the creative folks at CloudAhoy, they developed an app that could transmit performance scores within seconds of landing. The effect has been immediate and impressive.
It turns out that pilots are a competitive group. Who would have known?
Although individual scores are transmitted only to the pilot, the aggregated data appears on a dashboard for all to see. But emails and texts started flying between the “competitors.”
“What did you score on that visual approach to Scottsdale?” said one.
“There must be something wrong with my box ‘cause it said I was 20 knots fast,” said another.
Nope. The box was correct. And so was the data. Instead of pilots “feeling” they were flying a stable approach, they can see the actual flight in multiple formats on their iPhones 30 seconds after engine shutdown.
Charlie usually scores 100. I am trying to get close to that.
This competition is leading to safer flying. CJP commissioned a study conducted by the Presage Group to find out exactly why pilots of Citations make decisions on approaches. That data showed new SOPs tested in FlightSafety simulators by 20 CJP members flying over 200 approaches. The result is their new Safe to Land Initiative. And the scorecard for the initiative is FOQA data.
Sometimes the changes are subtle. Sometimes dramatic. A Midwest flight department submitted their data to Charlie for a fleet of Citations. He noticed many were landing well past the 1000-foot marker on virtually every landing. “Why?” Charlie asked their chief pilot. After a pilot meeting, it turned out that there was an unwritten competition to see who could get the most applause on landing. The crews floated their airplanes down the runway to achieve the softest touchdown.
And nobody knew it was happening.
That competition has been channeled to see who can achieve a stable approach every time.
Pretty cool.
Fly safe.
