The Allplane Podcast #50 - Airlines & the Weather, with Victor de los Santos (SITA)

Episode #50 deserves some sort of special jubilee. This is why I think there’s no better time to launch a new project within this podcast, a whole cycle of episodes focused on the different ways digital technologies can make flying more efficient and comfortable for passengers and airlines alike and already today.

This four part series has been done in collaboration with SITA for Aircraft, a technology company that, among other things, helps airlines fly more efficiently through its suite of software products for airlines.

If you have ever flown through an area of turbulence or an active storm you are already aware of how much of a hazard weather can be. At the very least, foul weather can mean a miserable journey and, in some cases, extra fuel and maintenance costs for airlines.

This is a topic we have dealt with in this podcast before, although we had not spoken, so far about the weather. And, while weather forecasting has become increasingly more accurate, in an aviation context, adding additional layers of information and analytical tools delivering actionable recommendations can make all the difference.

Today’s guest is Victor de los Santos, product manager for eWAS Pilot, a SITA for Aircraft technology that helps pilots and airlines optimize their flight plans to cope with all sort of weather conditions, even those that can be trickier to monitor, such as high altitude ice crystals.

Victor is an experienced engineer that knows this space inside out, so this conversation really helped me understand better how airlines and pilots prepare for different weather events, which tools they have at their disposal and how this translates into a smoother ride for passengers.

Listen to this episode for a masterclass on weather and aviation!

Download this episode from:

Apple Podcasts / iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or Stitcher

Things we talk about in this episode:

  • Victor’s background and experience

  • Why weather matters in aviation

  • Which different sorts of weather are of concern to pilots

  • How pilots and airlines prepare for weather events

  • What sort of technologies are there to help pilots navigate the weather

  • How do airlines source their weather forecastss

  • What is eWAS pilot

  • How does eWAS pilot work and how it helps pilots optimize their flight plans

Interview transcript

Hello and welcome to the Allplane podcast 

Where we talk with interesting people that are redefining the future of commercial aviation

But first of all, and before I introduce today’s guest, let me remind you that you can find all the previous episodes of this podcast as well as many other aviation stories on our website: allplane.tv - allplane.tv

This is, actually, episode number 50 of this podcast aaaand also the first of a four-part series of episodes that we have done in partnership with SITA for Aircraft, a technology company that creates software solutions that help airlines fly more efficiently.

The first instalment of this series is about the weather.

Yes! storms, turbulence, high altitude ice crystals (we are going to talk about those later in this episode) and any other meteorological event that pilots have to take into account when preparing their flight plans.

And to talk about all this, we have today as guest, Victor de los Santos, a product manager for eWAS Pilot at SITA for Aircraft. eWAS Pilot is, essentially, a software platform that provides pilots and airlines with sophisticated analytical tools that helps them adjust their flying patterns to weather in the safer and most efficient way.

With Victor we have a broad-ranging, insightful conversation about the many ways in which weather matters for airlines and the different tools at their disposal to route aircraft through different sorts of weather conditions. We also talk, of course, about Victor’s and SITA’s own work in this field.

So, without further ado, let me welcome Victor to the podcast!

Hello, Victor. How are you?

I'm good, Miquel, how are you?

Very well. Welcome to the old plane Podcast. I'm very keen to speak with you today. Because we're gonna deal with a topic that I find really fascinating. And I think it doesn't get as much media coverage as it deserves. And that's basically what technology can do to make flying more efficient, more comfortable, and more environmentally friendly, by optimizing the way that aircraft, commercial aircraft, fly. So I'm gonna ask you to - like all guests - introduce yourself. But first of all, let me say that you are a product manager at Sita for aircraft, which is a large technology company that works on solutions for the commercial aviation industry. And you're a product manager for something called eWAS pilot, which we're gonna learn now, what it's all about, first of all, just in a few words, can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about your background and your current role at Sita?

First of all, thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure to be part of this podcast. So I'm a product manager as I said that Sita for aircraft. My background is: I studied in Barcelona, aeronautical engineering, and then I did a master's in computer science at University of London and maths in our space engineering at University of California, Irvine. And I've been now working in Sita for five years, I started as a developer, as a software developer working on eWAS pilot at the beginning. And now I'm the product manager of it. Which I think it's pretty fascinating, I'm trying to understand all the needs of our customers. I'm preparing everything that is related to, to our weather providers, how we deal with the Super with our customers, what should be developments, how we can improve our products and make aviation safer?

Yeah, actually, I was actually reading through your CV on LinkedIn, I was quite impressed. I mean, you've you've been working in the field of software and different technology companies I got some experience at Lockheed Martin as well and simulators right before joining Sita which is a large software, technology company many different things in particular I'm really interested by the by the product that you manage this he was it designed to fulfill a very specific function. And that is actually to help pilots to navigate the weather and to make their flight paths more efficient. Basically, to find the best way to get from point A to point B, avoiding all the nasty weather you might find in between. Why is weather so important? Obviously, air is a fluid thing. So when an aircraft is flying it can encounter all sorts of adverse weather conditions. We all heard about weather, weather related cancellations, turbulence, it can make a journey really uncomfortable? What are the sort of weather phenomena that we should take? What the pilots should take into account when preparing for a flight.

So there really I mean, weather it's something it's crucial in aviation, because in the end, weather is a depiction of the different physical interactions, right, that are happening in the atmosphere. And those features are making an aircraft flight, right. So any change in those conditions are going to have an impact on the flight, which is the things that are causing the turbulence, it's causing problems, not only trouble ends with engine failures, delays can be caused by the weather. So it's very, very important that all the airlines and pilots are very aware of any kind of potential hazards that are going to happen. In fact, when pilots are preparing for flight, they are looking for all kinds of hazards. Not only weather hazards, but hazards of all kinds, but weather is one of the big ones, right? Because if it has, it can have a huge impact. And we have the aircraft flying with a very, very strong headwind, it is like we have someone pushing us backwards. Right. So that's so those are the kinds of things that are affected. So that's just one of the examples of it.

Yeah. I wanted to ask you, actually, is the wind pattern, the wind direction and strength...is it something that you would qualify as a weather event?

Absolutely. There's something called the North Atlantic organized tracks and the Pacific organized tracks. Basically, those are different streams of winds, which, when our aircraft are flying through them, it's really having an impact on the flight because it can speed up the flight or slow down the flight. So it's kind of like a jet stream. It's like you go on in the water, and there's a current, but it's exactly the same in the air. So there's been I don't know how long ago, there was one record of a commercial flight, it wasn't a supersonic flight, that went at the highest speed possible because he was kind of surfing on this stream.

I think it was a British Airways Flight flying between New York and London, I think, yeah, I read about that...Something like, you know, five and a half something hours or something like that. 

Yeah, exactly. Really fast on a non supersonic aircraft.

Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I read some research. There's some research out there that says that all these, let's say, extreme weather phenomena are going to become more frequent with climate change. So that's, again, another link here, between this very current topic of climate change, from a slightly different angle in this case, which is a more immediate, more immediate effect on people traveling right now or in the very near future. I'm going to post a link to some of this research that is out there that I wanted to ask you...obviously, the weather is so important, and it's always been important. So how were pilots handling these weather until now? I mean, what's the normal, traditional procedure to prepare for weather? Is this that, I guess, pilots receive a briefing before the flight and then they adjust? I don't know at what level this is done, if it's done at the pilot level, at airline level, is there a meteorological department that takes care, or an operations department that takes care of those things. So yeah, I'm just asking from complete ignorance, because I'm not so aware of the intricacies of day to day operations when it comes to weather.

Sure. So it really depends on the airline, whether they have a weather department or not. There are very big airlines such as Delta, they have a very powerful weather department that they are generating their own weather forecast. There are some other airlines that are using weather from different weather sources. There are two main centers in the world which are called the world area for call centers. There's one based in London, which is the UK Met. And there's one based in Washington, in the United States, which is the NOAA and those two are like the pillars of all the weather information that is related to aviation, they are generating from them can be generated something that is called a significant weather charts, just kind of like which is the weather it's more relevant for a flight. And then airlines can also obtain this information from other different weather aviation graded weather providers. We have providers such as DTM, The Weather Company, DWT, which is the German weather provider, a Japanese weather provider. And basically, what happens is that the airline always has one of these weather providers or has its own with a solution. And whenever they are preparing the flight, they generate the briefing package. And these briefing packages must contain the weather information relevant to the flight, right. So there's something called the flight folder, which can be a piece of a set of papers, which contains all the information for a flight, including weather charts, weather information that are relevant to the flight. So right now, what happens is that there is this department is a flight dispatcher that prepares the flight, that it's the knows what, like what is going to happen, prepares the route and generates these weather charts, it can be automated, it can be something a bit more manual, and then the pilots receive such information. And then in the briefing room, the pilot is going to check all of this information. And so he's going to evaluate, okay, it looks like this area, there are some thunderstorms that may happen. So maybe this particular route is not suited for that. So he's going to call the dispatcher, “hey, we need a new flight”. Or “we need your flight route”, because we're going to go through some bad area. So basically, the panel's are preparing for that they need to review not only the flight in route, not only information about the route, but also for the different airports. This is something that is very, very important. There's something called the METAR and the TAF in the case of the majority, this kind of a forecast of what is going to be happening at a particular time at an airport. And this is relevant, because in the case of aviation, they need to know to which airports they have to go to and what the weather forecast is in case they need to make an emergency landing. So there's all this process at the briefing room? And then of course, when flying, they keep monitoring all the weather with different sources of weather.

Yeah, actually you anticipate my next question: how current all this information normally is before the flight. And then during the flight, what sort of instruments... because there's also the radar, I guess that can tell the pilot what's ahead...up to what degree the pilot can modify the itinerary in function of the weather he's finding ahead and how often does it happen? I mean, how, let's put it this way, how accurate are those forecasts current that they basically do away with the need to make last minute modifications in flight? 

So there's two things here one is this strategic face and what is the tactical face right. So in a strategic phase is more when you are on the ground. And we are preparing your flight  and reviewing the mission. Depending on how you're retaining this data, it can be like generated three hours ago, six hours ago...Usually forecasts are valid for a very long timeframe. So it can be valid for 12 hours for 18 hours for 24 hours, despite the fact that they can be generated like...they are renovated every six hours. But the validity of the data it's easy to see that as it is, of course, it's important to always have the latest, the most updated information because it can change, right? So that's something that there are several ways one of them is eWAS pilot, which helps getting always the latest information. That's when we're in the briefing room. And then in flight. Basically, the pilots are using different weather, weather sources, what is the weather radar that they have, which has its limitations, because it's a very directional, directional tool. So they cannot really know what's happening behind or around the aircraft, they can only see what is happening in front. And at the beginning of the erratic, they can really like there, there are some limits on that. Again, they are bringing, it's compulsory for them to bring all the weather charts that are certified on the system. So they can also review that information. But then, depending on which solutions... if you have inflight connectivity, you can even get updates on  real time, not only the forecast, but also observations of things that are happening at a particular time. And in the end, a pilot has maneuverability in the sense that they can change the route if they believe there is a hazard, if there are weather hazards. So for example, there is a thunderstorm that has been generated through the path that it's meant to follow. So they can definitely call ATC to say “hey, can we get vectors for different directions? So that we can avoid these clouds that are in this area?” So there is a maneuverability board that pilots have in order to prevent all of this information all these weather hazards 

And is it pretty frequently that an aircraft has to make very drastic itinerary modifications because of weather?

Drastic modifications not, because the idea is that they are prepared in the briefing room. So they are aware if thunderstone is predicted to happen and they plan ahead, right, there's all this briefing phase which is that's why they do that, they go before the before a flight, they sit down together the pilot and the first officer and they discuss if there is a need of preparing all of that information. And in areas that are very congested like Europe, also we have ATC that already knows what is the status, so they are not going to allow you to file a flight plan that is going to go through an area which has a lot of convection hazards.

But there are also some, some atmospheric phenomena that from what I read, I'm not definitely not a big expert in this topic, but I read that the they are they can be quite difficult to forecast or to or even to spot from a distance things like turbulence itself, or something called the high ice water content, which is basically when there's small ice crystals that can interfere with a with the engines and create some some trouble there is something that is also included in this type of forecasts. You mentioned the concept of aviation grade forecast, which I assume it's something that it's a degree more accurate than the, let's say, the general forecast we we can get publicly, that anyone can get

So, yeah, definitely there are some things like for example, something called clear turbulence, which you can't really see because there is not a cloud telling you that it's happening with these big masses of air that I'm moving. And in the end, the weather hasn't always happened because there's a gradient, there's always like a difference off in between two aspects and then it creates these changes on the on the on the atmosphere right. So, you have things like the clear turbulence and they can be predicted, they can be forecasted, and then they are added into the system. And they are added into the different weather sources. And then there are things like, for example, the high intensity water crystals, you can predict that it is happening. One is the forecast and what is the observations of things that are really happening, right. And then in the case of these high I water crystals, what happens is that sometimes you can’t really see all that information directly from the weather radar, because it's very, very small. It's very small crystals, which are not detected by the radar. Of course, airlines, as technology advances, they start to incorporate more of that information, but there are some airlines that still don't have that available. So it's important to always try to have sources that are providing this information for your flights.

With this ice crystal thing, it just came to my mind now that we have seen several volcanoes in different parts of the world, in the Canary Islands there is an active volcano now, another one in Hawaii and in Japan, I don't know if that's something that can be also detected and that it's a hazard that airlines need to deal with 

It is definitely a hazard. And that's something that it's highly shared within the aviation. So aviation is always aware whenever there is a volcano, because the ashes are very, very hazardous for the engines, they can create problems, they can even stop an engine. In the end, they are like small rocks, like microscopic rocks, that go through the engines, and they are hazards. So those are the kind of things that at the briefing time, they are aware of...the very second that la volcano kind of erupts, you know that all the ATC are going to restrict flights around the area.

That's a sort of situation where a product like the one you manage, eWAS, is supposed to come into play, like helping airlines to optimize their flights around these extreme weather events. What can you tell us about eWAS...I mean, how does it work and what's the concept behind it. 

So, eWAS Pilot what tries to do is to bring the 21st century into aviation when it comes to weather. Airlines have been using it for a long time paper charts, which are like well...they have like maybe six diagrams, depending on different hours, but pilots have to do a big effort decoding information that is on those charts about interpolating the position of the aircraft to see “okay, so, this aircraft is going to arrive at this time, So probably there will be this potential convection in this area…” eWas Pilot tries to speed up all this process so that pilots are less time decoding information and actually taking decisions and evaluating and acting on those decisions. Because what we are doing with eWas Pilot is, basically, we have a four dimensional depiction. We have a map and we have a vertical profile. And then we also have the time, time as a value. So basically what we do is we load the flight into our system, and then you can project the position of the aircraft through the route. According to the departure time of that aircraft, according to the route, when you're in what we are depicting is what is the weather that is forecasted when the aircraft arrived to that position of the flight, so you are always very aware of your roof, what is the weather that you can expect to have? Something that we tried to do when we were designing this and we have been working very closely with different airlines, was that pilots should be able to use it eWas Pilot in three minutes, it means that in three minutes, they can evaluate all the weather for the flight, and check all the information. Not only that, we also have recordings of things like the tough information and the meta information, which right now, if you see it, just someone that doesn't know about aviation will read it. And it's nonsense. It looks like gibberish. 

Yes. And in practical terms, how does all this manifests itself? Is it a software package that is delivered as a cloud based service? Or how does it work in practice, I mean, is it something like a web portal that the pilot has access to, is it something like an app they have to download.

So basically, violets are bringing an electric light back right now, which most of them is an iPad, standard iPad, they will say one that you can buy at the Apple Store. Some of them are also using Windows, and it's an application that it’s installed in. It is a native application installed in it, one of the things is that it's not a web portal, because they can use this application without connectivity. So the way that we work is when it has connectivity, the application is constantly downloading all the latest weather information. So it's not like six hours or three hours before. We always have the latest information available into the system. Once the pilot goes flying, if there is no internet connectivity the information is still available in the system so they can evaluate all the data at any particular time of the flight.

And if there's connectivity on board, then it's constantly updated during the flight…?

Exactly. Because we are displaying not only forecasts, but also observations which are like “we are having lightning strikes. So you can see that five minutes ago, there were 100 lightning strikes in this area”. So those are real observations from weather radars that are transforming the search images and information that is being extracted at the current moment into polygons and systems that can be seen on the application.

And how do you source information? Where does it come from?

So this is one of the strong things that we have on eWas Pilot is that we have several weather providers as airlines tend to use one weather source in the case like it can be UK Met, it can be meet your friends, it can be DTM, right? So we have tried to do something that is adaptable to all the needs of any kind of airline. So what we do is we obtain all the weather from several weather sources. And then what we do is we transform it in a very unified way, in the sense that a turbulence is always going to be turbulence, it doesn't matter if it comes from one weather provider or another weather provider. Icing conditions is the same picture, you can always see who is the provider, but it's on a second layer. In the end, we were trying to focus on the hazards.

So you can also forecast all these ice particles...

Yeah, yeah. We have. We have some of our providers are providing the ice crystals. Yeah.

Because until now, I guess, as you said, airlines get information from one source. I guess they have some sort of contract with a weather information provider. But then what you do is basically you act as a sort of an aggregator for many different sources. So you provide a more complete picture. Is it worldwide? So is the service available anywhere in the world?

Yes, definitely. In fact, what we try to do is cover a lot of the different regions, for example, we recently got the WNI, which is weather news incorporated, in Japanese, which is very strong in Asia Pacific. So all our weather providers are providing worldwide coverage, but airlines that are flying in an area prefer some things that the weather providers from the same area, despite  worldwide coverage, because well, they are the ones that they are more used to. And we are one of the unique providers of worldwide information. Some of our it's something that is very unique for eWAS Pilot.

And what are the tangible benefits an airline gets, because obviously there is this talk of optimization of flying more efficiently. Have you quantified what are the tangible benefits with real use case data? Is there any of this data just to get an idea of the magnitude? Is there any data that you can share publicly?

Yes, definitely. So the idea is that our main kind of the return of investment, right...talking like very business minded here...but the return of investment, it's safety, safety, safety...and it's difficult to put a number on safety. If no one hurts, how do you quantify it? you only care about it when a hazard happens, but in any case, we have statistics of customers that didn't eWAS before and now they use it and there's been a reduction in several ways, especially the reductions in case of aircraft going through severe turbulence, they need to go through maintenance, right? so an airline that has aircraft grounded, because they went through severe turbulence usually it can be around $17,000, having it grounded for this inspection. So 10 of these in a year, it's $170,000. 

So no money. So every time an aircraft goes through turbulence needs to...

...not every time, not every kind of turbulence...when they are considered extreme and severe turbulence, those like that can cause very costly issues on the engine. And it is not only about the engine, there is the cost when it comes to injuries on the passengers, injuries on the crew, the cabin crew, that which in the end, there is a heavy cost on that. So there is a benefit of being safer, which is because in the end that transforms into money. And there's also even the fact that there's even reductions on the amount of fuel consumed. If you need to avoid if you need to avoid turbulence that you were not prepared to or you didn't forecast properly, that deviation is going to it's going to cost you money on extra fuel consumption that you weren't expecting. So having a bit of preparation, thanks to products like these hub, it gives more visibility is reducing the amount of money that the airlines have to pay, we have found as as an interesting thing, there's something called innovation for the for innovation, which is the discretionary field, which is, after all, the mandatory field that that our flight needs to carry on there is something called discretionary fuel, which is the extra fuel that the pilot wants to add, because he feel safer, right is the human factor that he decides to add on that. So pilots that have been using eWAS, they are more confident on the data that they have, which makes them a lot less discretionary. They are more confident. So they don't want to put more just in case, right? Having better information helps make better decisions.

How long has the service been available? Is this already in service with airlines? And what sort of usage are we talking about now?

Yeah, so right now, I mean, we know that over 60,000 commercial pilots have at least tried the application once. We have over 36 customers worldwide. It started seven years ago with our first customer, which was Air France. And now we have customers worldwide. We have Air France, Singapore Airlines, we have Air China, Xiamen Airlines, we have Etihad Airways, and more that are constantly trying the application, we are talking with many different other airlines. 

Very, very interesting. Where can people find out more about this? Should they contact you as a product manager? Or is there a website for this product?

Yeah, so through the SITA for Aircraft website, it was part of this part of the portfolio of products, which is called the digital way of Operation products. So in the SITA for Aircraft website, there is a lot of information from that. And definitely you can understand how the application works, how it looks like and what how, how it works, what web providers are, and what all the benefits that you can get out of it.

Well, thank you very much. I think it's very interesting getting an insight into this very specific area of commercial aviation, because that's something that it's normally out of sight. So as a passenger, as a frequent traveler, you take many things for granted. And obviously, there's a lot of preparation that goes into making sure that you have a flight as smooth as possible. And most of the time it is like that. But as you mentioned, I mean, sometimes there is some turbulence there can be other issues. So yeah, it's good to know that technology is improving to make these events even more rare than they are now. So yeah, well, thank you very much, Victor. It's been great learning about this 

My pleasure

I will post some links with some information, some of the technical and scientific concepts that we talked about today. And that's been great learning for me as well to get up to speed with all this topic!

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