Project successfully completed

February 2009

The Knowledge Transfer Partnership between University of Portsmouth and Flight Data Services carried out during the last three years was successfully completed and was awarded the highest grade of “Outstanding” by the KTP Grading Panel.

FDS Moves to New Offices

December 2008

Due to rapid expansion of the company, Flight Data Services outgrew the office facilities at the Gosport Business Centre and moved to new offices in Fareham.

New contact details are:

FDS User Group 9

November 2008

The 9th Flight Data Services User Group Meeting was held in Portsmouth UK on Thursday 20th November 2008. The 6 monthly meeting is an opportunity for all of FDS customers from around the world to come together to share Flight Safety information within a confidential environment. As well as presentations from the customer airlines on various aspects of Flight Data Monitoring (FDM), the meeting was addressed by FDS company and service developments.

International Air Safety Seminar

November 2008

Chris exhibited his project to Flight Safety professionals at the annual International Air Safety Seminar (IASS), October 23-26, 2006 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The exposure to the commercial aspects of marketing the product along with networking with Flight Safety professionals was a valuable experience and greatly increased awareness in the project. Photo!

Marketing Material to Promote the Project

October 2008

A FlightdataAI™ pull-up stand and leaflets have been produced to promote the project at forthcoming exhibitions. The material has been designed to promote the use of artificial intelligence in improving flight safety.

Academic Paper Present at the KES Conference

September 2008

Chris attended and presented his academic paper at the KES academic conference in Croatia to an audience of about 60 researchers. The paper was well received and generated much interest and some thought provoking conversations.

Python Programming Course

May 2008

Chris attended a programming course teaching him the benefits and usage of the high-level programming language, Python. The knowledge learnt has helped Chris to develop the new Data Analysis Platform.

FDS User Group 8

April 2008

Flight Data Services held the 8th FDM User Group Meeting at the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) in Farnborough on Wednesday 9th April 2008.

The User Group Meeting was well attended by delegates from 15 FDS customer airlines. As well as presentations from the customer airlines on various aspects of FDM, the meeting was addressed by guest speakers Nick Dann and Mark Ford, Senior Inspectors of Air Accidents from AAIB, who did a presentation on AAIB and gave a special guided tour of the AAIB Hangar with an opportunity to examine aircraft wreckages from past accidents.

FDS User Group 7

October 2007

The 7th Flight Data Services User Group was held on the 25th April 2007. The 6 monthly users' group is an opportunity for all of FDSL's customers from around the world, to come together to share Flight Safety information within a confidential environment.

EPSRC Studentship appointment

October 2007

Following the win of an EPSRC Grant to further the studies into the mathematical algorithms, the studentship has been awarded to Mr. Edward Smart.

Edward has a Masters in Mathematics and brings with him expert applied knowledge of Support Vector Machines (SVMs). He will be working closely with Chris, bringing expert mathematic techniques to the AI algorithm development.

Presentation to AGS Users Conference, Mexico

September 2007

Chris presented his Flight Operations paper on Staying Safe in Times of Change to the AGS Users Conference held in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The conference, held between the 10th and 13th of September 2007, attendees included Flight Data Analysts and associated personnel from Airlines that use SAGEM's Analysis Ground Station for their Flight Data Analysis.

The conference was very interesting - especially seeing the different implimentations of the AGS system amongst other Airlines and discussing everyone's individual FDM troubles. It was facinating to see the range of implimentation levels in place; some use almost every feature AGS has to offer, whilst others are having troubles with the basics (mostly due to resource constraints) and can only use the data when reacting to events reported by members of crew.

Chris' presentation was very successful with lots of interest and even received offers of further funding and sponsorship!

Presentation to European Regions Airline Association (ERAA)

July 2007

Chris presented his paper on Flight Data Monitoring in Times of Change to the ERA Joint Operations and Maintenance Workgroup. The meeting was held in Cologne, Germany on 10-12th July 2007.

The presentation sparked much interest and helped to promote and highlight the advantages of using Flight Data Monitoring to assist Airlines with Flight Operations Safety. Once again, the details of the research received a warm welcome, with many questions as to methodology being trialed and the percieved advantages the technology will bring to Flight Safety.

Some interesting points were brought up. Firstly, the interest was expressed about the possible applications of the AI algorithms to the Maintenance data, in order to highlight and predict changes in the operation of the aircraft itself rather than the Pilot's operation of the aircraft. In response; the advantage of the algorithms being developped is that they are being designed using a low level approach. They concentrate on the relationships between parameters and how they perform together over time. Therefore they do not care about

FDS User Group 6

April 2007

The 6th Flight Data Services User Group was held on the 24-26th April 2007. The 6 monthly users' group is an opportunity for all of FDSL's customers from around the world, to come together to share Flight Safety information within a confidential environment.

One session at the Users' Group is a confidential forum for exchange of experiences. These sessions are particularly valuable to Flight Safety Officers in small organisations, who often work in isolation. The confidential format allows discussion of highly sensitive topics.

Algorithm Development

April 2007

The current focus of the project is the development of Aritificial Intelligence Algorithms. By the use of many case studies, a multitude of different AI techniques are being studied to determine their effectiveness in analysing the complex format of Flight Data and obtaining useful results and finding "hidden" information within the data. Current techniques under study include Clustering, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms, with more case studies to follow!

Amsterdam EASS Seminar - "Staying Safe in Times of Change"

March 2007

FDSL Users' Group 5

November 2006

The 5th Flight Data Services Users' Group was held between the 7th & 9th November 2006. The 6 monthly users' group is an opportunity for all of FDSL's customers from around the world, to come together to share Flight Safety information within a confidential environment.

Flight Data Services (FDS) host a Users' Group every 6 months to provide a forum for customers to discuss monitoring issues of common interest, develop a greater understanding of the potential of the FDS Service, and discuss service developments and individual configuration changes.

Speakers at the User Groups have included the UK CAA FDM specialist, the Chairman of the UK Flight Safety Committee and representatives of the European Aviation Safety Agency and the European Regions Airline Association.

One session at the Users' Group is a confidential forum for exchange of experiences. These sessions are particularly valuable to Flight Safety Officers in small organisations, who often work in isolation. The confidential format allows discussion of highly sensitive topics.

Paris Flight Safety Foundation Conference

October 2006

Chris attended the 59th annual International Air Safety Seminar (IASS), October 23-26, 2006. The IASS is a joint meeting of Flight Safety Foundation, International Federation of Airworthiness and International Air Transport Association.

The seminar constitutes a major gathering of aviation professionals and is aimed at decision makers in government, industry and academia - people charged with the responsibility to influence safety in design, manufacture, development, training, maintenance and operation. The Flight Safety Foundation publish the full proceedings of its seminars so that the infomation and ideas exchanged can be used by professionals worldwide to further reduce the risks in aviation.