Towards a pilot-centered turbulence assessment and monitoring system

Defining a standardized, objective, real-time method to measure turbulence would help to solve pilot reporting problems. Engineering turbulence assessment methods that use only current on-board data would provide a way to automate turbulence assessment in the near term. Although more sophisticated systems are actively being researched, these systems will be costly. The goal of this paper is to summarize the options and issues uncovered while developing the requirements for a real-time flight deck turbulence assessment system that could be developed without new sensors. The hope is that the resulting system would be more affordable and therefore available commercially in the near term.