Advanced aviation systems like drone delivery, urban air mobility, and high-altitude platforms are set to revolutionize transportation and services. To achieve the full potential of these innovations and make them affordable and accessible on a large scale, a fundamental shift in how we think about aircraft operations and human roles is necessary.
The traditional model of direct human control of individual aircraft or small groups can be successful and safe only so far. This model faces challenges such as managing workload spikes during fleet-wide failures, handling tasks that exceed human capabilities, and difficulty in hiring and retaining personnel for monotonous monitoring roles, all of which may impact the safety expected in aviation. By learning from existing operations, and applying lessons from other heavily automated industries, it is becoming clear that expecting humans to act as backups for automation in complex, fast-paced situations is often unreasonable and ineffective
New Words for a New Era draws on lessons from industries other than aviation that have been transformed by large-scale automation, proposing a path forward involving a paradigm shift in thought and models of control. Instead of focusing on incremental automation increases within existing roles, we may need to reimagine human roles entirely.
The argument leads to the proposal of a new concept for aviation as a highly automated aviation system (HAAS). In the HAAS model, humans shift from directly operating individual aircraft to overseeing and managing complex integrated automated systems that, in turn, control fleets. Human responsibility transitions from tactical aircraft control to strategic management of automated services that handle the fleet.
To clearly define these concepts, the paper supports the development of a new lexicon, distinct from traditional aviation terms. While not attempting to comprehensively define the entirety of the lexicon, this paper proposes example terms such as:
- Highly automated aviation system (HAAS): An integrated automated aviation system under human management.
- System management organization (SMO): The organization of people and teams that manage the HAAS and ensure its safe operation.
- Unoccupied aircraft: An aircraft that does not carry any occupants (passenger or crew), differentiating it from an “unmanned/uncrewed” aircraft which traditional only means without on-board crew.
The authors propose that a new lexicon, and the shift to a HAAS model, will enable the industry to develop and learn the science of managing ultra-large-scale automated systems with greater linguistic precision and collaborative safety across stakeholders.
By first implementing and validating concepts on low-risk operations (like small unoccupied UAs), we can gradually adapt these learned frameworks to higher complexity and risk, avoiding costly mistakes and enabling the safe, widespread deployment of advanced aviation services.
For more information on this paper or the work of the Foundation’s Advanced Aviation System Group, please reach out to us at wolfh@flightsafety.org .