A Data-Driven Approach to Analyze Turbulence Encounters from the American Airlines Turbulence Task Force

American Airlines (AA) established a Turbulence Task Force (TTF) in 2016 with an objective of reducing turbulence encounters that injure passengers and/or flight attendants. To assess the progress made toward meeting these goals, recent efforts have been focused on improved collection and analysis of data to establish quality metrics. AA has equipped nearly 400 Boeing aircraft with the Turbulence Auto-PIREP System (TAPS), a registered trademark of The Weather Company, an IBM business. These aircraft collect automated turbulence measurements for near real time dissemination to other aircraft flight crews and flight dispatchers. Over the next year another 400+ aircraft will be equipped to enhance report coverage, especially for AA's international operations.

In addition to collecting the objective turbulence data, the TTF is working to collect, categorize and analyze other information when events do occur, including:

• Atmospheric weather conditions including wind, temperature, and cloud conditions
• Proximity to convective weather
• Turbulence forecast information
• Flight crew and flight dispatch information exchanges during the event
• Injury detail
• Expertise from post-mortem recaps

This presentation will reveal early data analysis results from the TTF's efforts, especially in the areas of turbulence event characteristics and flight attendant injuries. The presentation will also emphasize areas where data collection is challenging, highlighting potential procedural changes and/or research initiatives needed to improve these developing metrics.