Posts about stuff relating to airports
Hitting the Limits of ChatGPT: Blogging & Background Research
Monday’s post, on SWA1248, was the only one where I had started writing before I started this silly blogathon thing. It wasn’t completely written but I had kicked it off early in December with the strong idea that ChatGPT was going to help me write it. It didn’t work out that well.
Today, I want to do a quick review of that experience to keep the levels of excitement around the AI revolution in check.
Please don’t get me wrong, AI is coming and it’s coming fast. I saw a tweet the other day that said (in effect), “AI isn’t going take your job but someone better at using AI will.”
Global Reporting Format: Further Viewing
As you can imagine, our discussion so far has leaned towards the airport side of the GRF story. So, for today, I thought I would share a couple of videos that discuss the GRF from a pilot’s point of view.
Developing Policy for Safe Landings: the Global Reporting Format in Australia
Complete alignment with ICAO is, generally, a good policy to have. Their standards and recommended practices (as well as guidance material) are developed in a thoughtful and considerate way. This process is slow and methodical (perhaps frustratingly so at times). Experts from around the world participate, often in their own time and in addition to their day job, with further support from the ICAO Secretariat. For my part, I enjoy being a part of this process.
But what happens with the standards that don’t quite gel with the operational environment in your state?
But what happens with the standards don’t quite gel with the operational environment in your state?
Accident Review: Southwest Airlines 1248 Runway Surface Condition Reporting
In my day job, I've been working on Australian standards for implementing the Global Reporting Format (GRF). Unfortunately, as with many advances in aviation, this was a change brought about by an accident. While it was likely that there were many influential accidents and incidents, I want to analyse the critical inciting event in this post.
Southwest Airlines Flight (SWA) 1248 was miraculous in that everyone on the aircraft survived. But it was also tragic with the death of a child not even at the airport. And it triggered a lot of action by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the International Civil Aviation Organisation, and many other civil aviation authorities.
Navigating Vertiport Design Specifications
Just under four years ago, I wrote a primer on “Urban Air Mobility.” I had the best intentions in developing a series of articles on vertiport design concepts and standards. But I never did.
At the time, there was practically no data on aircraft performance nor any indication from regulators regarding how they would manage these new facilities. And I had no idea I would be part of a crack team developing Australian vertiport design, operations and certification standards. But here were are.
In this post, let’s take a moment to review the current state of play.
Effortlessly Summarise Videos with ChatGPT: Vertiports Edition
On the heels of my post on ChatGPT summarising incident reports, I wanted to highlight another summary workflow that is gaining traction, as well as a recent online webinar that included me. In early December, my CASA colleagues Joe Hain, Liam Smith and I held an introductory webinar on the draft Advisory Circular that just went out for consultation.
But maybe you were too busy to attend, and perhaps you’re still too busy to sit there and watch the video.
If this is the case, here comes ChatGPT to the rescue.
Header image: Judit Peter (via Pexels):
Friday Funny: An Airport Love Story
As a generative natural language model, ChatGPT is good at writing. And thanks to its colossal training data set (something like the whole Internet up to September 2021), it already knows a lot of stories. Moreover, it is capable of writing in a multitude of different styles.
So, for a quick “Friday funny” post, please enjoy Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet re-imagined as an airport safety love story (no tragedy in this one).
AI-Powered Incident Report Summaries
Having mentioned this great new technology a few times, perhaps I should talk about what ChatGPT could do for you. Well, at it’s core, ChatGPT reads and it writes and that got me thinking about similar tasks I’ve had to do in the past. Reading incident reports and summarising them for my bosses came to mind almost at once. So, let’s test it out.
Winter Wonderland? Hardly...
Compared to the Arctic Blast that ripped through North America a couple of weeks ago, my experience with airport winter operations has been fairly limited. And while a little snow and ice can be treacherous, the amount of frozen water that was dumped over there was downright deadly.
On the Road to Recovery?
ChatGPT suggested I write a post about the aviation industry’s recovery from the impacts of COVID-19. Still, this week's news suggests that this road to recovery remains bumpy. But I do love data and numbers, so let’s see how we are going.
Ten Year Retrospective: My Favourites
And in more self-indulgence as the Ten Year Anniversary of The Runway Centreline approaches, here is a selection of my favourite posts from every iteration of my blog. They are mostly favoured because they pushed me to either look deeper, look within or write about something I wasn’t fully comfortable with.
Ten Year Retrospective: Most Popular Posts
The Ten Year Anniversary of The Runway Centreline is approaching. I hope you will indulge me some self-reflection in a couple of posts as the big day approaches. Here are the top six (6) posts from the latest iteration of my blog. Some I know were going to be popular based on their timeliness and fairly unique approach. Others I was quite surprised about.
Listening to Real-World Radio Communications
I have a confession to make. When my family is travelling or even just late at night after they go to bed, I will cue up video after video of …
Real-world air traffic control recordings.
They provide great insight into accident and incident response - both good and bad. Or sometimes, they just provide some welcome comic relief in the most avgeek kind of way.
Image credit: (cc) Guilherme Rossi on Pexels
Learning Lessons Through Investigations, Reviews & Analysis
Incident investigations have long been a key part of Safety Management System activities that a good airport operator is expected to undertake.
Bow-Tie Risk Assessment Series
A long time ago, I was deep into the bow-tie risk assessment methodology and over the years, I have never really left it. These posts were the basis of some great work I did a couple of years ago working with BHP Billiton which I will blog about in the near future.
Image Credit - (cc) Oleg Magni
Vegetation & Habitat Control
I've been doing a bit of clearing of land at my airport to make way for a new fence. We've had to expand our borders to accommodate those new instrument approach procedures I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Given that the airport is in "the bush", this meant knocking over a few trees to construct the new fence and make the new airside area completely manageable using tractors and mowers. So, we broke out the relatively cute D-6 dozer and set about clearing the new airport boundary and land.
Header image: Skitterphoto (via Pexels)
All Training Courses are not to be Considered Equal
This is probably my first real whinge post. But last week, I spent a good 9 hours on a Sunday in a training course that was a huge waste of time. And this was vital training - gun safety.
Header image: Karolina Grabowska (via Pexels)
Setting the Standard
This is me coming up for breath. I've been in the deep-end of airport operations for the last 10 months or so and I'm only just getting my head above water. I think (or at least hope) I've achieved a lot over the last couple of months but very little has been blog-worthy. However, over the last week or so, I've been swimming in that lovely little pool called Wildlife Hazard Management. And while I was re-writing my airport's Wildlife Hazard Management Plan, I stumbled across something I thought worthy of a share.
Like a Comfy Pair of Slippers
After a year away from airports, I couldn't stand it any longer. So, I'm back and this time I'm actually working for an airport operator. As such, I'll be swimming in airport stuff again and as I hit something interesting, I'll post it here. I'll also be posting a few projects I'm working on and a couple of handy hints and tips from time to time.
Header image: Lisa Fotios (via Pexels)