By Rob Stapleton
Alaska Journal of Commerce

In an effort to improve air tour safety in Alaska and Hawaii, several groups have joined the Federal Aviation Administration to create a new training and terrain awareness simulation program for commercial pilots new to Alaska.

The new program, called visual cue-based training, uses graphically realistic terrain on a flight simulator that shows rookie pilots of air tour operators what their flight path looks like in blue sky conditions, compared to marginal weather, and other simulated severe weather conditions.

"This is a tool to help train new pilots from outside of the state or new pilots to a geographical area when to turn back or go to an alternate waypoint on a flight-seeing trip," said David Karalunas, manager of the Alaska Regional FAA Safety Team.

The new training device was developed by the Medallion Foundation, working with industry groups interested in aviation safety. It simulates flights in Alaska's Misty Fjords and the Mendenhall Glacier areas.

The training is in response to a series of accidents that involved flight-seeing tours in Southeast Alaska.

On July 24, 2007, a Taquan Air aircraft crashed, killing all five on board. On Aug. 16 that year, another DeHavilland Beaver operated by Sea Wind crashed, killing four people.

"We are responding to provide this training, with input from experienced local pilots, to create a training tool to create better awareness in hopes of diminishing accidents in this region," said Karalunas.

Karalunas said the key to such training is to use realistic graphical depictions before a pilot actually makes commercial flights with passengers. Input from seasoned local pilots helped the FAA Safety Team script the story boards for the simulators.

"We talked to the operators, and the Medallion Foundation interviewed local pilots to determine the best reporting points," said Karalunas.

The simulations depict the flying altitude of tour routes, showing visual checkpoints that have vertical lines above the geographical reference. These are the cues.

Once a pilot passes over this cue, he makes a decision based on visibility to continue on the tour route or fly to an alternate.

"The simulator can throw in fog, clouds, rain, snow, etc., to obscure the 'cue point,' and the pilot is graded on the decision to go or to divert," said Karalunas.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the July accident of the Taquan Air crash, the pilot had only seven hours of flight time in Alaska and had accumulated 185 total hours flying in Southeast.

A 1999 study conducted by the FAA found that pilots with the most local experience had no controlled flight into terrain accidents where flight into weather was a factor.

Working in conjunction with the Alaska Aviation Safety Project, the geographical informational service company E-Terra LLC aims to improve flight simulation by adding three-dimensional imagery, which helps make simulated flights more realistic.

"Realistic simulation is only as good as your database and these areas were difficult to get good satellite data due to the constant overcast weather," said Lars Gleitsmann with E-Terra. "And in the case of the Mendenhall Glacier area, we are hoping that recent passes will give us a clean shot at the area."

E-Terra successfully mapped and created 3-D realistic flight simulator data for 12 mountain passes in Alaska that are used on Medallion Foundation simulators located at key airports statewide.

"We believe that by providing realistic flight simulations to these pilots, we have cut down the CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) crashes because pilots are aware of how it looks before they fly into these passes or if they are rusty and just don't remember, they can look before they fly," said Karalunas.

Creating the flight simulating for these areas was not as easy as it sounds, according to E Terra's management, because existing geographic databases are not complete.

Frank McQueary, chief financial officer for E-Terra, said the Alaska mapping database is a patchwork compared to the continental U.S., which is seamless with satellite data that has been field checked.

In fact, some mountain ranges in Alaska are off by as much as three miles when comparing GPS databases to official maps, he said.

According to Gleitsmann, only 1 percent of the data used in mapping in Alaska has been field checked, which makes providing simulator reality a problem.

But it causes bigger problems for accurate navigation by aircraft.

"Mapping is important across the fabric of all aspects of business," said McQueary. "It's important to natural resource development and for Native allotments and transportation planning. We have basically been ignored by the beltway when it comes to quality mapping issues."

E-Terra has developed the Misty Fjords flight tour routes, but is waiting for more information from satellite passes made this spring over the Mendenhall Glacier.

In the meantime, operators are excited about the development of the training tool and have sent their new pilots for cue-based training, Karalunas said.

Medallion Foundation Executive Director Dennis Ward recently visited helicopter flight-seeing operations in Hawaii to promote interest in a similar type of training for their pilots.

"Everyone is extremely interested in the development of this as a tool for training," said Ward. "We think this will work for helicopter operators in Hawaii that have had some challenges there due to weather closing off their flight paths."

The FAA is working on installing weather cameras and is discussing ways to encourage installation of automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast equipment for Southeast tour operators.

In its final report on the flight-seeing tour crashes in Southeast, the NTSB recommended the use of ADS-B, originally designed and tested in Alaska.

"The safety board encourages the FAA to accelerate the implementation of a fully capable ADS-B system in Southeast Alaska. Until all air tour operators in Southeast Alaska are utilizing the full benefits from ADS-B, the safety board is concerned about the lack of near real-time weather information for commercial air tour operations in Southeast Alaska," according to the 2008 NTSB report.

ADS-B is widely credited for improving safety in Southwest Alaska by as much as 45 percent since its implementation.

"Despite the obstacles, you can't dispute that Alaska has always been the perfect test bed for aviation safety," said McQueary. "This is just another phase in the use of technology to improve aviation safety."