Developments in US aviation weather R&D

Improved safety and capacity in the terminal area are major aviation concerns. Weather is a major factor in accidents and delays within the US accounts for 33% of commercial carrier accidents, 27% of general aviation accidents and greater than 70% of the serious delays in the US aviation system. The current safety focus is on the detection and prediction of rapidly changing convective weather weather, icing, and clear air turbulence. Air traffic personnel are reluctant to take on major new responsibilities for the separation of aircraft from hazardous weather, so there are major initiatives underway to providing better information to airline pilots and operations center personnel via the Internet. We discuss how terminal delays due to convective activity and adverse winds have been dramatically reduced at several major U.S. airports through real time integration of various terminal area weather sensors. The extension of this sensor fusion approach to ceiling and visibility prediction and, reducing wake vortex separations on a weather adaptive basis is also reviewed.