Newswise — UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Amy R. Pritchett, professor and head of aerospace engineering at Penn State, was recently named one of six experts by U.S Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to serve on a U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Special Committee that will review how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certifies aircraft.
The committee, an independent body formed within the structure of the DOT’s Safety Oversight and Certification Advisory Committee, was established following the recent crashes of two Boeing 737 Max aircraft. Findings and recommendations by the committee will be presented directly to the secretary and FAA administrator.
“Given the explosion in both capability and complexity in modern aircraft, a review of how we assure the safety of these aircraft is coming at a critical time in aviation,” said Pritchett. “With my own background in cockpit design and human-autonomy teaming, I’m particularly fascinated to examine how we assess how well highly automated aircraft can support pilots in all conditions, even when something fails that the automation depends on, such as a sensor.”
Pritchett, who served a two-year term as director of NASA’s Aviation Safety Program from 2008-2009, will be joined on the committee by Gretchen Haskins, chief executive of HeliOffshore Ltd, an international expert in aviation safety and a former U.S. Air Force officer; Kenneth Hylander, chief safety officer at Amtrak and a former senior safety executive at Delta and Northwest airlines; and J. David Grizzle, chairman of the board of Republic Airways and a former FAA chief counsel.
The committee will be co-chaired by retired Air Force General Darren McDew, former head of the U.S. Transportation Command, and Lee Moak, former president of the Air Line Pilots Association.
According to the DOT, whose main priority is safety, the committee will be specifically tasked with reviewing the 737 Max 800 certification process from 2012-2017 and recommending improvements to the certification process.
Pritchett has served on similar committees in the past, including as a member of the FAA Research, Engineering and Development Advisory Committee, and as a member or chair of National Research Council committees examining a range of concerns from the future of NASA's astronaut corps to FAA air traffic controller staffing. She is also a licensed pilot of airplanes and sailplanes.
“I’m particularly glad to serve on this committee examining aircraft certification,” said Pritchett. “Aviation is blessed with new technologies that have so much potential – if we can prove they are safe.”
Pritchett, who joined the Penn State College of Engineering in August 2017, oversees the Department of Aerospace Engineering, an international leader in aerospace education and research and home to one of only three Vertical Lift Research Centers of Excellence in the United States. The department’s faculty are internationally and nationally recognized for cutting-edge developments, particularly in vertical lift, wind energy, computational methods, aeroacoustics, aircraft icing and intelligent systems for manned and unmanned aircraft and for spacecraft.
Her research interests include examining the intersection of automated and intelligent technologies, expert human performance and safety-critical operations. This framing particularly applies to modern commercial aviation, but also extends to other areas such as long-duration spaceflight missions.
Prior to Penn State, Pritchett was the David S. Lewis Professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and the director of Georgia Tech’s Cognitive Engineering Center.
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