SOFIA - Safe Automatic Flight Back and Landing of Aircraft
Overview
Background & policy context:
The solution proposed in the EC FP6 project SAFEE (Security of Aircraft in the Future European Environment) and developed by SOFIA, the Flight Reconfiguration Function (FRF), is a technological response from the industry to the social demand of increasing the security of air transport after the September 11th terrorist attacks. It is also a technological development to cope with the aims of the 'Ultra Secure Air Transport System' concept developed by ACARE in its Second Strategic Research Agenda.
Objectives:
As a continuation of the SAFEE works on FRF, SOFIA:
- designed architectures for integrating the FRF system into several typologies of avionics for civil transport aircraft;
- developed one of these architectures; validate the FRF concept and the means to integrate it in the current ATM;
- assessed the safety of FRF at aircraft and operational (ATC) levels.
Methodology:
FRF will take the control of the aircraft and will manage to safely return it to ground upon a security emergency (e.g. hijacking), disabling the control and command of the aircraft from the cockpit. It will also execute a new flight plan towards a secure airport and land the aircraft there. The flight plan can be generated from the ground or in a military airplane and transmitted to the aircraft, or created autonomously in its own FRF system.
The execution of the new flight plan is autonomously performed by FRF without any control from ground. Additionally, SOFIA will investigate the integration of such solutions into different airspace environments: current ATM, ASAS/ADS-B, airspace with/without radar coverage, 4D trajectory negotiation, etc.
SOFIA will validate FRF by using a platform composed of an ATC facility and a flight cabin simulator (an upgrade of the one used in SAFEE SP3) linked, and by performing flight trials with real aircraft. The SOFIA consortium was a well- balanced and skilled set of nine organisations from seven countries across Europe and includes SMEs.
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