Southwest Airlines AMDAR Participation and Benefits

1. Southwest Airlines AMDAR Participation and Benefits Rick Curtis Chief Meteorologist rick.curtis@wnco.com

2. SWA/AirTran Cities

3. SWA/AirTran Cities - International

4. SWA/AirTran Aircraft

5. SWA/AirTran Facts and Figures • In April 2012, the AirTran 737-700 fleet began transitioning to Southwest. • 3500+ daily flights from 97 airports • 606 Boeing 737 aircraft (300’s, 500’s, 700’s, 800’s) • 88 Boeing 717 aircrafts (200’s) • Southwest/AirTran consumed 1.9 billion gallons of jet fuel in 2012 • Average flight length is 694 miles • Shortest: 148 miles (AUS-HOU) • Longest: 2,329 miles (BWI-LAX)

6. Reporting Aircraft • Wind/Temperature - 70 • Water Vapor – 87 – plus wind/temperature • Turbulence – EDR – 85+ expected

7. Reporting Rates 6 sec intervals to 90 secs from OFF 20 sec intervals to 510 secs to TOC 3 min. intervals to TOD 60 sec intervals to ON

8. 24 Hours of SWA Reports82,000 + observations

9. 24 Hours of SWA Water Vapor Reports48,000 + observations

10. Sounding

11. Why Participate • Improves forecasts – external and internal. • Improves both terminal and en route forecasts. • Better forecasts result in more efficient operations. • Strengthens partnership with NWS. • Integrated into forecast models. • Used by local forecast offices. • Supplement radiosondes. • Integrate real-time turbulence information into operations to improve safety. • Plans include: • Operational usage within Dispatch • “Smart alarming” to the cockpit. • Integration with other weather information made available to flight crews.

12. Where do you start? • Obtain Executive level sponsorship. • Identify key individuals within Maintenance, Engineering, Operations, and Legal to assist with program. • Negotiate and execute legal agreements. • Modify avionics software to database and report. • Activate aircraft reporting. • Establish ACMS software tracking. • Communicate to Dispatchers and Pilots implementation details.

13. What additional effort is needed with Water Vapor reporting? • Requires a part time project manager. • Provide input into the STC process – installation and removal. • Write installation and maintenance procedures. • Create installation schedules for targeted aircraft. • Develop and implement processes for routine maintenance.

14. Why “do” Water Vapor? • Very little additional bandwidth required to downlink data. • Carrier has not been responsible for obtaining the STC – just provide the consulting support. • Installed during “heavy checks” so no significant impact to operations. • Water vapor measurements are essential to the forecasting process. • Greatly fills in “gaps” between 00Z and 12Z radiosondes.

15. Turbulence • SWA has worked over a series of years with NCAR for equation development. • Integrate into avionics software. (cost) • Install on aircraft and track software revisions. • Test, test, and re-test to gain acceptance from all sides. • Integrate into displays to consolidate information. • Implement data into operational decision making.

16. Lessons Learned • Problem with water vapor hose installations. • Inventory tracking – multiple installation sites. • Amount of acceptable inventory. • Software upgrades overwrite reporting capabilities. • Competing company ACMS resource priorities. • Older ACMS could not accommodate data load of EDR equations.

17. SWA Benefits • Assists with internal forecasting efforts for fog, thunderstorm development, precipitation type forecasting. • Provides a good source of information for turbulence and other weather related internal research activities. • Offers a positive Public Relations effort demonstrating public-private partnerships and environmental focus. • Costs involved with program are essentially covered. • Beginning to explore the employment of this data for more precise fuel planning activities.

18. Thanks very much!