Workshop Overview

Worldwide civil aviation safety statistics indicate that ‘in-flight loss of control’ remains the second major cause (after ‘controlled flight into terrain’ (CFIT)) of fatal accidents. Recent loss of flight control accidents and incidents, in which mechanical and atmospheric hazards were the main contributing factors, show that a small number of aircraft were recovered successfully despite severe failure conditions and controllability problems. In other cases, awareness by the onboard crew of the remaining performance and control capabilities in the degraded flight conditions could have improved the survivability of the aircraft.

The GARTEUR Action Group FM-AG16 on Fault Tolerant Control has investigated potential improvements in aircraft survivability, by demonstrating the capabilities and viability of novel fault tolerant flight control techniques using high-fidelity nonlinear simulation models based on realistic failure scenarios validated against flight data.

The ‘post 9-11’ air traffic system, in which civil and military transport aircraft operations are performed in high-risk mission environments exposed to external threats, further motivates the application of fault tolerant flight control and reconfiguration techniques which previously did not seem cost effective enough from a mere system safety point of view.

Emergency landing sequence and wing damage due to surface-to-air missile impact, DHL Cargo A300B4-203F, Baghdad, 2003.

An increasing number of measures are currently being taken by the international aviation community to prevent loss of flight control accidents. This not only includes improvements in procedures training and human factors, but also finding approaches to better mitigate system failures and increase aircraft survivability in the case of an accident or in degraded flight conditions. Acceptance of innovative fault tolerant flight control and reconfiguration techniques in the commercial and military aircraft field has still not been achieved. However, improved situational awareness or guidance would have increased the odds for pilots of aircraft that have encountered severe and exceptional mechanical failures or the impact of intentional hostile actions. The results of the GARTEUR research group will contribute to the advancement of flight control techniques that are able to bring crippled aircraft safely back home after facing the improbable.