Enhancing safety in glider flights

Abstract

The theme of paper is to find out new possibilities in safety improvements during sailplanes flights, focusing primarily on flights when the separation with other traffic is reduced. At the beginning a summary of glider evolution across the centuries is made starting with the interwar period to the shapes that we know from the latest exhibitions. First part of the paper is followed by the analysis of the current available technical measurements which enhance safety and reduce the probability of in-flight collisions during various phases of flight, including latest and most modern technical implementations used by glider operators to enhance the safety of themselves and others. We will also look up for any available legislative rules based both on national civil authority regulations defined by state itself and for regulations that were created by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) which covers most of glider competitions organized world-wide. In practical part we followed our thoughts about how to improve the current situation in this part of the aviation industry. In following steps, we decided to ask the glider pilots about their personal experience with reduced separation caused by nearby gliders during different phases of operations. Generally, there is a huge number of mid-air collisions during sailplane competitions and flight phases where pilots are crossing each other by minimal separation (mountain ridge flying). We decided to suggest minor legislative regulations and technical implementations to improve current situation world-wide and make these flights as safe as possible with minimizing of future incidents.