A software engine for multi-criteria decision support in flight management

Objective

Pilot3 will develop a software engine model for supporting crew decisions for civil aircraft. This software will provide a set of options to the pilot with information to help the crew select the most suitable one considering multi-criteria business objectives of the airline.

Pilot3 will look integrate airlines flight policies and overall performance targets to select and rank the alternatives. The system does not only consider the flight but the whole network operations of the airline.

Pilot3 is composed on four different subsystems: Indicators Estimator, Alternatives Generator, Performance Assessment Module and HMI. The first three will be developed during the project, while a HMI will be designed. Pilot3 will specify the software interface so that it can be integrated in larger systems.

The Indicators Estimator will provide an estimation of the different performance indicators for a given trajectory. Pilot3 will allow the airline to select how to estimate these values: using airborne information, ground information, with analysis of data and heuristics or with machine learning predictors.

The Alternatives Generator will automatically compute different alternative trajectories considering the airlines' flight policies and its performance goals. This system will also allow the pilot to add constraints and even to specify a given trajectory to be assessed. This module will perform a multi-objective optimisation.

The Performance Assessment Module will compare the expected performance of each alternative trajectory produced by the Alternatives Generator and rank them according to the overall airlines' goals.

Finally, the designed HMI will present the information to the pilot and allow the crew to interact with the system, accepting an alternative, rejecting them (triggering a re-computation of alternatives) or adding constraints.

Pilot3 will contribute to the capture and definition of flight policies and allow airlines to define enriched policies.