Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine July 2017 - 4

Feature Article:

DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2017.160175

Commercial Airline Single-Pilot Operations: System
Design and Pathways to Certification
Yixiang Lim, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Vincent Bassien-Capsa, Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group, Cambridge, UK
Subramanian Ramasamy, Jing Liu, Roberto Sabatini, RMIT University, Melbourne,
Australia

The main challenges in implementing SPO are:

INTRODUCTION
Global air transport demand is increasing steadily, with the
global revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) growing at an annual rate of 4% [1] and the number of passengers rising at an average annual rate of 10.6% [2]. By the end of 2016, it is estimated
that 1,420 large commercial airliners will be produced, 40.5%
more than was produced five years ago [2]. A consequence of
this growth is an exacerbation of the existing global shortage
of qualified pilots. Airlines have to hire more than 500,000
new commercial pilots until 2034 in order to meet this unprecedented air transport demand [3]. Additionally, the high costs
associated with training and remuneration of pilots has been
a substantial economic burden on air carriers, prompting active research into the concept of single-pilot operations (SPO)
as an option for the future evolution of commercial airliners.
SPO cockpits have already been developed for military fighters
as well as general aviation (GA) aircraft, with small business
jets like the Cessna Citation I obtaining approval for SPO as
early as 1977 [4], however, the last decade has seen considerable interest in the implementation of SPO in commercial aviation. NASA has been conducting SPO-related studies since the
mid-2000s [5], [6], while some recent research in Europe has
focused on the technical [7] and operational [8] challenges of
SPO. In the SPO concept of operations (Figure 1), a single pilot operates the flight deck with increased ground support from
a dedicated ground human flight crew. The ground operators
(GO) fulfil a role similar to that of a remotely piloted aircraft
system (RPAS) operator, providing a combination of strategic
and tactical support to the single pilot in collaboration with the
air traffic controllers (ATCo).

Authors' addresses: Y. Lim, S. Ramasamy, J. Liu, R. Sabatini,
School of Engineering - Aerospace Engineering and Aviation
RMIT University, PO Box 71, Bundoora, VIC 3083, Australia. Email: (roberto.sabatini@rmit.edu.au); V. Bassien-Capsa, Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group, Cambridge CB5 8RX, UK.
Manuscript received August 15, 2016, revised November 3,
2016, and ready for publication December 15, 2016.
Review handled by E. Blasch.
0885/8985/17/$26.00 © 2017 IEEE
4

Operational: distribution of workload between pilot-incockpit and ground crew, single-pilot resource management,
communication procedures and processes, as well as pilot/
crew training requirements.
Technical: high bandwidth, low latency communications
(line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight data links for airto-air, air-to-ground as well as ground-to-ground systems),
autonomous navigation (flight planning, management, negotiation and validation), autonomous surveillance (senseand-avoid, health monitoring), the development of adaptive
automation and interfaces for pilot/ground crew.
Safety: increasing system integrity and performance, as well
as assessing the impact of higher levels of automation on
flight safety and specifying incapacitation procedures.
Human factors: assessing pilot workload, addressing singlepilot incapacitation, maintaining the situational awareness of
pilot and GO, developing new crew resource management
(CRM) procedures for interactions between the pilot and
GO, building automation trust, as well as designing appropriate human-machine interfaces and interactions (HMI2).

To address these issues, projects such as the Advanced Cockpit for Reduction of Stress and Workload (ACROSS) [9] and Aircrew Labour In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) [10] have
brought together academic, industrial, and government organizations to develop solutions for workload reduction in the cockpit.
The proposed systems incorporate knowledge-based capabilities as
well as cognitive and adaptive interfaces to mitigate the increased
pilot workload. These are relatively new concepts in civil aviation
but are essential for the introduction of SPO. Considering both the
SPO concept of operations and the evolving regulatory framework
for conventional, GA, and unmanned operations, the system architecture for a certifiable virtual pilot assistant (VPA) is proposed to
enable the implementation of SPO for commercial airliners. The
VPA is a knowledge-based system, which reduces single-pilot
workload in the cockpit through increased system autonomy and
closer collaboration with the ground component. In particular, this
article discusses the integration of communications, navigation, and

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JULY 2017

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