The European Helicopter Association (EHA) continues to highlight the need for human oversight as it weighs the potential benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in aviation.

“AI need not mean autonomy,” the EHA said in a statement, citing a key a message from the recent European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) ‘AI Days’ event in Cologne, Germany. 

“More immediate safety benefits could come from intelligent decision-support tools that helped pilots recognize developing threats, manage workload and make better-informed decisions in complex operational environments.” 

The EHA noted AI may help as “one potential element of a wider package” of mitigation tools for inadvertent entry into instrument meteorological conditions (IIMC). 

“AI-enabled tools could potentially combine weather, terrain, aircraft trajectory and operational data to recognize a deteriorating situation and provide an earlier, contextual warning — ideally, before an aircraft entered IMC,” the association stated. 

AI would complement, rather than replace, human factors, training, and procedural and technical mitigations. 

“The discussions in Cologne reinforced a principle central to EHA’s approach: The objective should not be AI for its own sake, but the proportionate application of trusted technology to identifiable safety problems,” the association stated.

“IIMC could provide an excellent rotorcraft use case through which to demonstrate exactly that.”

Full text of the EHA’s position paper on AI and IIMC is available here.