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Wind Shear

תמונה
  Wind shear is a sudden, drastic change in wind speed and/or direction over a very small area. (FAA, 2016). Low-Level Wind Shear (LLWS) considered one of the most hazardous weather phenomena due to the proximity of airplanes to the ground when encountering a wind shear. Pilots need to be well trained to react immediately when encountering a wind shear, as those sudden changes are rapidly affecting the airplane's performance and cause changes to the airplane attitude, including violent updrafts, downdrafts and abrupt horizontal movement. Low-Level Windshear The most severe type of wind shear is a Microburst. A microburst is an aggressive degradation in performance that can produce downdrafts of up to 6000 feet per minute in a lifespan of 5 to 15 minutes. The effects of microburst winds consist of performance increasing headwind, followed by a downdraft, and performance decreasing tailwind. Therefore, encountering a microburst during the initial climb after take-off or on a final ap

Air Traffic Control

תמונה
  Air Traffic Control Entities The Air Traffic Control (ATC) system is an essential management infrastructure that provides traffic advisories and increases aviation safety throughout the world by using several monitoring techniques and technologies. By managing separations of aircraft and air traffic flow, the ATC system plays an important role in the safety and productivity of airline services and the accessibility of airline services for passengers and freight. (Arblaster, 2018). Air Traffic Controller Since the Air Traffic Control system has multiple and heavy responsibilities over managing high volumes of traffic throughout different locations and sectors, the entire comprehensive infrastructure was built under several entities that allow ATC agencies to specialize in particular fields and provide better traffic management services in all phases of flight, from pushback from the gate until reaching the parking spot at the destination. FAA Terminal Radar Control Facility The most

Noise Abatement

תמונה
  Airplanes are noisy. Either on idle power or during a takeoff run, or even with the engines off, and only the Auxilary Power Unit (APU) is running, airplanes still make much noise.   Over the last decades, with the drastic growth in population and the increasing demand for air traffic services, residential areas nowadays are closer to airports and significantly affected by noise pollution, created by various types of airplanes, either small GA planes, medium or heavy jets.   A340 On Final Over Hong Kong Academic studies have shown that continuous exposure to noise pollution may cause significant health issues such as hearing problems, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and gastrointestinal problems. In addition, noise may cause interference with communication, sleep deprivation, poor performance at work and in school due to lack of concentration, and general annoyance. It is estimated that more than ten million Americans have noise-induced hearing loss, and twenty million ar

The Federal Aviation Act of 1958

תמונה
  The Federal Aviation Act Of 1958   The new and innovative technologies that came up during the 1950s implemented a massive increase in the demand for airline services and created the national airspace in the U.S way more crowded than it used to be a few years before. The consequences of increasing civilian air traffic, military aerial activity, and the lack of cooperation between those two strained the government's capacity to regulate air travel safety. (Harris, 2004).  Air traffic control agencies began to expand due to the increasing traffic   On June 30 th , 1956, two airline jets (United and TWA) were cruising on a collision course in uncontrolled airspace and crashed over the Grand Canyon, killing 128 people on board. At that time, this crash was the most extensive loss of life in an aviation accident and raised public concern regarding the significance of aviation safety standards. Due to the significant crash, Congress passed the Airways Modernization Act to estab

Human Factors Challenges

תמונה
  Human Factors and Crew Resource Management (CRM)   Over the years, the relatively young commercial aviation went through significant technological improvements required to ensure the safety of the massive number of its users. For example, as the impact of an airplane accident was growing, so did the warning and protection systems installed on modern commercial jets, causing a significant increase in aircrafts' safety and reliability. (Sanchez, 2019). Even though airplanes today are equipped with the most state-of-the-art technologies, the human factor still occurs in most aircraft accidents. The term human factor covers the science of understanding the properties of human capability, the application of this understanding to the design, development, and deployment of systems and services, and the art of ensuring the successful application of human factor principles into the working environment. (FAA, 2016). Pilot error can result in an accident due to multiple different huma

Airport and Aviation Security

תמונה
  The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), formed 19 years ago after the 9/11 attacks, deals with a massive number of different types of threats daily. The main goal of the TSA is to ensure a safe and secure environment within and around the airports. Thus, preventing terror attacks against aviation facilities and aircraft hijacking.   During the 9/11 terrorist attack, the weakness of the airports' security across the country was revealed, and the TSA has been founded to establish a higher level of security standards and countermeasures. Unfortunately, as the security level became more sophisticated, so did the terror organizations, trying to find new ways and technics to penetrate these protection layers and threaten the aviation industry worldwide. One of these types of threats is utilizing insiders to gain access through security and get the ability to establish a terrorist attack this way. Every generation of aircraft attackers exploits a new loophole that must be

The Pitot-Static System

תמונה
  The Pitot-Static system is the name of a combined system that measures dynamic and static pressure changes during the movement of the aircraft through the air. Those pressure measurements provide critical flight data to multiple primary and secondary flight instruments such as the Altimeter, Airspeed Indicator, and the Vertical Speed Indicator (VSI). A failure of the Pitot-Static system can reflect the pilot an unreliable critical flight data such as false airspeed and altitude settings and trends. In order to ensure a safe operation, pilots are required to be able to recognize Pitot-Static system failures and possible mitigation strategies in case of that kind of a threat. Altimeter, Airspeed Indicator, Vertical Speed Indicator  Pitot Tube The pitot tube measures dynamic pressure that is being imposed on an aircraft when it is moving through the air. Pitot-Tube is interconnected with the static port and calculates the total of the Dynamic pressure and the Static pressure to provide