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One area of NASA's Aviation Safety Program involves investigation of the feasibility of advanced Aviation Weather Information Systems to reduce accident rates. An element of this program involves integrating weather information systems into the general aviation cockpit. Since the automotive and trucking industry currently use Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), this study investigated the possibility of applying similar systems in the cockpit of general aviation aircraft and examined three areas that support better understanding of this possibility. The first includes market activities in general ITS products. The second area involves a market research survey, to identify the user requirements for new in-cockpit information systems. The third area examines the historical growth patterns of GPS systems to estimate possible market acceptance of future information systems that have parallels with ITS in general aviation.

This paper summarizes the results of a survey to estimate the market penetration rate of cockpit weather information systems in five aviation markets: transport, commuter, general aviation, business, and rotorcraft. It begins by describing the general features that survey respondents identified as necessary characteristics for the market success of cockpit weather systems. Next the paper analyzes the financial benefit of cockpit weather systems for each market segment. Decision reversal tables and Monte Carlo simulation are employed to examine the sensitivity of the financial results to changes in the cost and savings elements. Finally, estimates for adoption rates in the five aviation market segments are presented.