Lufthansa Joins IATA Turbulence Aware Program

A Lufthansa 747-400 taking off from Newark Liberty International Airport

Lufthansa Group announced that it would begin to participate in the Turbulence Aware platform operated by the International Air Transport Association, the global trade association for the world’s airlines.

Turbulence is a costly problem for airlines and passengers that increases the cost of travel from increased fuel consumption, both minor and severe structural damage to aircraft, the need for maintenance from wear-and-tear, and injuries to passengers and crew. The Turbulence Aware platform receives current airline data from ground servers, performs quality control, deidentifies data, and provides the anonymized and data back to airlines so that it can be integrated with in-house or third-party flight planning or in-flight weather tools.

The information provided includes time, altitude, aircraft position, mean and peak energy/eddy-dissipation rate values as well as wind and temperature data, to increase situational awareness. EDR is a metric for measuring turbulence intensity.

Pilots can view the data directly on their navigation map in the cockpit, and color-coded symbols indicate the location, altitude, time, and intensity of the measured turbulence. In addition to Lufthansa German Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines and Edelweiss Air are participating.

Turbulence Aware was launched in 2018 and a total of 22 carriers including Air France, British Airways, Emirates, Southwest, and WestJet participate in the program.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)