Aviation concern for space weather is not new. Dispatchers and flight crews at airlines carrying the growing volume of passenger and cargo traffic on four north transpolar routes between North America and Asia routinely conduct comprehensive checks on solar activity.1 But some specialists now recommend that a far wider range of aviation professionals receive training on space weather regardless of where on Earth they work. Their specific proposal says, “The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) should define a minimum set of requirements for incorporating space weather into operational training for aircrew (pilots and cabin crew), dispatchers, air traffic controllers, meteorologists and engineers.”
The report advocating this training — issued in March 2007 by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Policy Program and SolarMetrics, a U.K. consultancy, with funding from the National Science Foundation and U.S. National Space Weather Program2 — cite…
