Hundreds of streams of different kinds of data flow from aircraft during each flight. NASA is mining that data for clues to improve safety.
Images credit: Maria Werries

When an airplane flies, hundreds of data streams fly from it every second—pilot reports, incident reports, control positions, instrument positions, warning modes.

But there's so much data, it's been nearly impossible for airlines to do anything other than look back for the cause of something that's already happened.

Enter the data mining detectives from NASA.

Data mining is the art of digging through mountains of data when you don't know what you're looking for or what might find. Popular search engines like Google™ do this every second.

NASA is mining terabytes of aviation data to find issues before they become incidents. Southwest Airlines is already using data mining "gold" to update their flight operations.

Watch The Leading Edge and learn how data mining benefits us all.

Learn about the many and extraordinary applications for data mining from guests:

• Ashok Srivastava, project manager, Aviation Safety Program, NASA Ames Research Center
• Jeff Hamlett, flight safety director, Southwest Airlines

• Beth Dickey, public affairs officer, NASA
• Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate