The Remote Oceanic Meteorology Information Operational (ROMIO) Demonstration

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Weather Technology in the Cockpit (WTIC) program is sponsoring an operational demonstration to evaluate the feasibility to uplink convective storm products to commercial aircraft flying routes over remote, oceanic regions for display on an electronic flight bag (EFB). The effort is called the Remote Oceanic Meteorology Information Operational (ROMIO) demonstration and is a collaborative effort between the FAA, the weather research community, the airlines and ground-to-air communications providers. The ROMIO will develop and demonstrate operational strategies for the use of rapidly updated Cloud Top Height (CTH) and Convective Diagnosis Oceanic (CDO) products on the flight deck, in the Oceanic Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) and as part of Airline Operations Center (AOC) flight dispatch operations. Participating airlines include Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines. The domain for storm product creation is contained by the scanning area of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) East and West satellites. Routes to be flown are between the continental United States (CONUS) and South America, Caribbean, Australia, and South Africa, among others. A select number of online pilots will participate in the demonstration. The ROMIO demonstration will begin in the fall of 2017 and be conducted for a year. During the demonstration, feedback from pilots, AOC dispatchers and Oceanic ARTCC Air Traffic Controllers will be solicited to ascertain the costs and benefits associated with providing realtime, rapidly updated graphical information on convective structure to them.

In this paper, the ROMIO demonstration purpose and goals will be described along with the communications infrastructure, the product displays, the weather products and the feedback mechanism. Preliminary findings will be presented as the demonstration will have a few months of operations by the time of the conference.

This research is in response to requirements and funding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the FAA.