When information stops arriving, a route on a screen can still look reassuringly complete. The important question is what that route represents: the intended flight, an earlier observation or a current position.
For us, this is a useful place to start when thinking about planning under difficult conditions. The application needs to help a person understand the information they have and recognise where it ends.
Keep intentions and observations distinct
A plan describes where an aircraft is expected to be. Observations describe what a source has reported. If that source becomes unavailable, the plan does not become a substitute for new observations.
Aerlattice explores this distinction through exercises and recorded or simulated positions. Its monitoring features include route-deviation and feed-loss alerts. Those features let someone examine how a change in the available information affects the planning discussion.
An alert is a starting point for review. Understanding the source, timing and limits of the available information still matters.
Consider the effect on the plan
A changed situation may lead to a proposed replacement route. In Aerlattice, that replacement stays a draft for human review. The previously accepted revision remains fixed until an explicit replacement decision.
This keeps the decision visible even as the exercise changes. Someone can inspect the proposed response and the checks behind it before accepting a new version.
Keep the claims specific
Interrupted information can be explored in a demonstrator. It does not follow that the application has been validated for contested operational environments, jamming or every kind of communications failure.
Our current work is a planning and review application with exercises for examining these behaviours. Establishing its suitability for a particular environment would require evidence from that environment. That remains work ahead.
