A risk analysis model of flight operations based on region partition

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to focus on flight exceedances in pilots' operations. With some bad conditions, such as a bad weather, flight exceedances might lead to serious consequences. They are significant hidden dangers of aviation. Risk analysis is carried out to identify pilots' high‐risk or low‐risk operations.Design/methodology/approachA multi‐objective optimization model is proposed for risk analysis of flight operations. An evolutionary algorithm is designed to divide flight operation state‐space into some high‐risk and low‐risk sub‐spaces.FindingsThrough the empirical study of a certain flight exceedance with the analysis model, the authors discover some high‐risk flight operations, which indicate coordination problems in coordinate control of airplane's speed, rate of descent, heading, roll and pitch, etc.Originality/valueThis paper employs a quantitative model to carry out risk analysis of flight operations. The results are useful to pilots' training and may improve flight safety fundamentally. The risk analysis of flight exceedance is one specific case in airlines safety risk management. Some other problems, such as cause analysis of flight delay, aircraft faults diagnosis, can be addressed in the same way and dealt with by specific model adjustments and algorithm designs.