Synthetic Vision System Commercial Aircraft Flight Deck Display Technologies for Unusual Attitude Recovery

A Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) study of 18 worldwide loss-of-control accidents and incidents determined that the lack of external visual references was associated with aflight crew’s loss of attitude awareness or energy state awareness in 17 of these events. Therefore, CAST recommended development and implementation of virtual day-Visual Meteorological Condition (VMC)display systems, such as synthetic vision systems, whichcan promoteflight crew attitude awareness similar to a day-VMC environment. This paper describes the results of a high-fidelity, large transport aircraft simulation experimentthatevaluatedvirtual day-VMC displays and a “background attitude indicator” concept as an aid to pilots in recovery from unusual attitudes. Twelve commercial airline pilots performedmultiple unusual attitude recoveries and both quantitative and qualitative dependent measures were collected.Experimental results and future research directions under this CAST initiativeand the NASA “Technologies for Airplane State Awareness” research projectare describe