United Airlines Vision for Weather Technology in the Cockpit (WTIC) Captain Rocky Stone Chief Technical Pilot - Surveillance Aug. 29, 2013

Overview  Turbulence information, what do we do with it?  Turbulence information, needs  Pilot and dispatcher training  Business case for Weather Technology in the Cockpit (WTIC) information  United Airlines Class 1 EFB – WSI weather  Summary 2 2

Turbulence information – what do we do with it? There are only two things aircraft do in reaction to turbulence information:  Change the trajectory of the aircraft o Horizontal or vertical o Flight plan - dispatcher o Tactical deviation – pilot in coordination with dispatch  Prepare the cabin for turbulence o Seat belt sign “on”, passengers seated and belted-in o Flight attendants seated and strapped-in o Galley and cabin secured o How much notice determines how much preparation is accomplished 3

What happens when the cabin is not prepared for turbulence?  Example of turbulence damage to aircraft 4

Turbulence – what information do we need?  Ideally – deterministic information on exactly where and when turbulence will be present  Realistically - probabilistic information could be useful to o Adjust planned trajectory Based on what is an acceptable risk level However, we plan for an optimum flight, and any change costs $$$ o Adjust cabin service times, pre-planning for when it may be appropriate for all to be seated o Adjust cabin “preparation for landing” execution, doing it early when turbulence is possible during the descent 5

Turbulence alerting  Alerting is critical to informing the pilot and dispatcher about short term immanent hazards o Pilots don’t know what they don’t know o Automated, simultaneous alert should go both to the cockpit and the dispatcher  Tablets with graphical weather capability are great, but most do not include any monitoring or alerting functions o Alerts via ACARS/SATCOM text message could direct pilots to specific graphical products to look at 6

Pilot and Dispatcher education  What can we teach our pilots and dispatchers about turbulence, especially CIT?  98% of the time, in clear air, it’s okay (light turbulence)  How do we tell the 2% of the time when it’s not okay? 7

Turbulence tactics and mitigation  The three “C’s” o Communicate How much time until we encounter turbulence? o Cabin preparation o Compliance Compliance increases as our information about turbulence improves (less “crying wolf”)  Survey of flights through potential areas of CIT shows o Passengers seated with seat belt sign on 83% of the time o Flight attendants seated 19% of the time 8

The business case for WTIC information  There needs to be differentiation between WTIC capable aircraft and non-WTIC capable aircraft o If aircraft with WTIC information are treated the same as all others, the system won’t change o Products delivered to the aircraft need to tailored for in-flight use, and many do not exist today Convective initiation product Near-term GTG with information on CIT Convective tops product o WTIC information needs to be supplemented with traffic flow management information (i.e. ATC sector loading)  Possible Traffic Flow Management (TFM) differentiators: o Parallel Airspace Flow Programs (AFPs), one for WTIC capable with a higher transit rate (hence lower delays) o Relief from the requirement to strictly adhere to playbook routing 9

Class 1 EFBs - Tablets Software Applications  Airwatch Mobile Device Manager (MDM)  AirWatch Secure Content Locker – Document Management & Viewer  Jeppesen Mobile FD Pro  WSI PilotBrief Optima  Non-company applications restricted – App Store disabled 10

WSI PilotBrief Optima ( v2.1 ) Weather Overlay / Google Maps  Full weather graphics available with Route overlay  Textual weather cached for offline viewing  Forecast feature showing future weather depiction  Ability to view displays in both landscape and portrait orientations  Decoded and Encoded weather reports 11

E-Enablement / Connectivity  United is in the process of installing LiveTV Ka-Band satellite broadband onto DirecTV equipped aircraft o 737 Fleet o s  Panasonic (PAC) Global Ku-band (GCS) broadband system being installed on remainder domestic and international aircraft o A319/320 o 747 o 777 o s  When activated, crew internet access will be via segregated portal, limited to operational products only  Customers may access internet using any Wi-Fi enabled portable electronic device (PED) 12

United Vision for Tablet EFB Weather  Within 2-3 years all aircraft will have a broadband pipeline to the ground, so live graphical weather will be routine, for now….  Cached graphical weather for inflight viewing  Goal is to replace pilots printing a copy of graphical weather during preflight preparation o Inflight reference o Crew briefings o Issues: What products are appropriate to cache, and for how long? How are “cached” products marked to differentiate them from “live” weather products? 13

 What can live graphical weather be used for inflight? o Better management of cabin service around areas of turbulence. o Better management of the “Fasten Seatbelt” sign o Bring the cockpit into the Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) triad with ATC and Dispatch May also require traffic flow management information in addition to weather information o Give pilots the tools to advocate for better decisions Better reroutes Better pilot situational awareness during Severe Weather Avoidance Plan (SWAP) operations RTCA Special Committee 206 is working on a standards basis for the FAA to allow for appropriate use of updated graphical weather inflight United Vision for Tablet EFB Weather (cont.) 14

 Only two things we can do to mitigate turbulence o Change the aircraft trajectory o Prepare the cabin for turbulence  Turbulence information needs o Deterministic vs. probabilistic o Alerting  There needs to be a business case for equipping to receive WTIC information o Preferential Traffic Flow Management (TFM) initiatives for WTIC capable aircraft Summary 15

16 Questions?

Thank You! 17