This project is an early prototype which analyzes black box data from flights. When we think of black box data we often think of data used to analyze a plane crash. The purpose of this project is to be able to review flights for potential future problems caused by either the pilot or a control system. In the early prototype we will focus on data during landings. The goal is to be able to easily evaluate landings using quantifiable metrics such as airspeed, groundspeed, vertical speed, and G-force. Three prototypes will be built in parallel using different platforms including Spark/Scala, Elasticsearch, and .NET/C#. This initial protype will be used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. 

The first iteration is very simple and is simply to evaluate a single flight in terms of how many G's are incurred upon landing. (less G's is better) This is actually something I have done using Excel by filtering on columns. Simply filter out all of the data points by altitude to only see the G force values at the elevation of the runway and you can see the values for G spike upon touching down. You can also see at what speed the aircraft touched down at. (slower is better). Although this may seem very simple, it is the first step in evaluating these "events" on a larger data set and pulling meaningful information out of the data.



  ** The full list of data points can be viewed here.