Information Needs in Flight Monitoring: A Tool in Aviation Security
October 2006
Andy Anderegg, The MITRE Corporation
C. Vanessa Fong, The MITRE Corporation
ABSTRACT
The Next Generation Air Transportation System security concept introduced flight
monitoring as a part of risk management and shared situational awareness. Information
on the aircraft performance, its flight trajectory, and the onboard situation with people
and cargo are all part of the flight monitoring. This information is required to manage
both an Air Traffic Management (ATM) emergency and a security event. That
information today is distributed among many operators in the system: air carriers, air
traffic and air security and defense operators, and the aircraft. Sharing this information is
currently dependent on manual interactions of various organizations that have data on a
flight and usually occurs during the event. Avionics could provide a more meaningful
picture through automatic updates or in response to interrogation. For better risk
management and more complete situational awareness, the aircraft could share status that
goes well beyond what is required for air traffic management alone. For example
automated emergency declarations could include the type of emergency such as 'cabin
depressurization.' These indications may help explain erratic behavior by a flight and
might quickly separate routine ATM events from security events. This paper is intended
to initiate a dialogue within the community on the potential role of avionics to be used as
a tool in aviation security.
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