Purpose of the EEAG
The FLYSAFE consortium includes several expert pilots, two airlines and one ATC centre. However, the need to involve still more stakeholders in aviation safety, such as airports, airlines, pilots and controllers, air traffic control authorities and service providers, has been acknowledged from the early stage when designing the project. Consequently, it has been decided to invite some of these stakeholders to create an external group of advisors to FLYSAFE, meeting periodically to interact with the project. This is the external experts advisory group (EEAG). The purpose of the EEAG is three-fold :
- At project start, to bring operational inputs and return from experience, to contribute to the initial operational assessment
- In the design phase, to get periodic views on the approach taken and the achievement made and to interact with the FLYSAFE team in providing comments from different (operational) perspectives on the systems, as the team intends to develop them
- At the final stage, in view of the project results, to comment on the best way to go towards marketable products and systems
Principles of organisation The organisation of the EEAG has been designed with the objective to get the best from its members, given their time constraints:
- Workshops meetings were convened periodically, once per year, lasting one or two days. EEAG members are invited to attend the FLYSAFE yearly Forums.
- The EEAG involves experts in the following categories
- Airborne operations, with airlines and pilots
- On-ground operation, with Airport operators, ATM authorities including Air traffic Controllers and Weather specialists.
- Certification authorities, with EASA, DGAC/SFACT, etc
- Experts wishing to interact more often with the team, can do so as to allow for a greater flexibility on a case by case basis
The EEAG is open to any company (airline, pilots in SME) willing to provide inputs to FLYSAFE in the scope of the project. The EEAG is managed by the members of the FLYSAFE consortium who are themselves experienced in the topics addressed: Use2Aces. They called, organised and chaired the meetings and the other contacts with the EEAG members on behalf of the team. The other partners in the project who have related experience and need the outputs will of course participate to this EEAG.
The first EEAG Meeting was held at the 5th and 6th of May 2005. As all EEAG meetings it was organised at the Country Inn (later renamed to Park Inn) Hotel in Paris near Charles de Gaulle airport. The focus of this first meeting was to get inputs to the operational assessment and to discuss first concepts. After this meeting it was decided to continue with the EEAG approach because the inputs and comments received were considered very useful.
The second EEAG meeting on 7th and 8th February 2006 as well as the third on 6th and 7th February 2007 were focused on implementation details. The FLYSAFE concepts were discussed in detail and dedicated questions addressed by the EEAG members. By that way the quality of the desired product could be significantly increased.
The final EEAG meeting which took place on 12th and 13th February 2008 focused on human factor issues that could be solved during the integration phase of FLYSAFE. A lot of positive feedback was received and several points for optimisation were taken. Further involvement of EEAG pilot and ATC controllers is foreseen for example during the evaluations of the different NG ISS components and the main task evaluation at NLR.
FLYSAFE considers the EEAG a success story. In addition to the very useful impulse the members gave to the project, it eased the process to get airline pilots for evaluations and to intensify the contact with local ATC authorities. The concept of organising workshops with external experts was well received by the members of the EEAG and by the FLYSAFE partners as well as the European commission.
