British Airways has chosen CEFA Aviation’s Flight Animation System (FAS) to help visualize flight events. The CEFA FAS is an analysis and investigation tool which uses flight recorder data to offer a realistic view of a just-completed flight and the complex chain of events experienced by the pilots.

“For British Airways, safety and security is one of our core values, and the airline has long been at the forefront of safety and training innovation,” said Captain John Monks, Director of Safety and Security for British Airways. “CEFA’s animation tool will be an important new element of the Management System to facilitate greater awareness and enhanced mitigation of flight safety risk across our teams and aircrews.”

CEFA FAS uses readily available data from aircraft flight recorders and transforms the data into a detailed, accurate depiction of the events of a flight, including incidents or accidents. The purpose is to raise awareness to safety concerns or familiarization of challenging airports by sharing ‘lived’ experiences. The FAS software can generate type-specific cockpits with advanced flight instrument panels, as well as external 3D views of the aircraft and terrain. It can reproduce any phase of flight: take-off, approach, landing, go-arounds, etc.

“Interpreting data without factoring in human actions and reactions can prove too simplistic,” explained Dominique Mineo, Founder and CEO of CEFA Aviation. “CEFA FAS goes beyond the mathematical and logical FOQA/FDM (Flight Operational Quality Assurance / Flight Data Monitoring) approach by recreating the situations experienced by pilots as accurately as possible.”

For nearly a quarter-century, CEFA Aviation has been developing tools to assist airlines, aircraft manufacturers, regulatory authorities and investigators in the prevention and analysis of safety factors in commercial aviation.

British Airways is a founding member of the OneWorld Alliance. Other CEFA Aviation customers in the Alliance include Alaska, American, Cathay Pacific, Iberia, Japan Airlines, Qantas, Qatar, Royal Air Maroc, and Royal Jordanian.

In addition to British Airways and OneWorld Alliance partners, CEFA Aviation clients included 100+ airlines on five continents, including Air France, Air New Zealand, Delta, Emirates, FedEx, Gol, jetBlue, Korean Air, Lufthansa, Southwest, Swiss, Ryanair, Turkish, United, Vietjet, Vueling, as well as investigative bodies such as the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA).