RESPONSE · REduced or Single Pilot Operation iNcapacitation Safety Enhancement

The resilient growth of global air travel continues to lead to ever busier skies and airports, placing growing workloads on pilots and operators both in the air and on the ground, as well as increasing the demand for pilots globally. Addressing these concerns will require technological solutions, in the form of increasingly automated assistance systems to help alleviate pilot workload (reduced crew operation, extended minimum crew operations), as well as fully autonomous solutions which can support Single Pilot Operations (SPO) in the event of pilot incapacitation. On the other side, the adoption of new operational procedures such as SPO will have an impact on the ground operations and the ATC operators responsibilities.The RESPONSE consortium led by Collins Aerospace aims to deliver one TRL2 solution: safe return to land including pilot incapacitation. The proposed solution directly support pilots’ incapacitation transition monitoring and deliver an integrated air-to-ground SPO CONOPS to enhance safe return to land operations. In the project, the Consortium delivers a technology enabler as pilot incapacitation transition monitoring to detect pilot incapacitation and map cognitive states and degradation of human performance. The solution delivered is a safe return to land CONOPS introducing the role of air-to-ground digital assistants minimizing the required changes from dual pilot operations to SPO, including dealing with pilot incapacitation in the flight deck, with the impact on ATC operators tasks and with the role of human autonomy/AI teaming to support workload reduction.RESPONSE project builds on top of the outcomes and recommendations of SAFELAND project and will enhance the execution of current projects in SESAR3 Industrial Research, actively contributing to the future preparation and delivery of a full demonstrator for safe return to land in the case of SPO.