Pilot Performance in Trajectory-Based Operations Under Concepts of Operation That Vary Separation Responsibility Across Pilots, Air Traffic Controllers, and Automation

Abstract

The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) will revolutionize the air traffic management system in the United States. NextGen will involve human operators interacting with new technologies in a complex system, making human factors and human–computer interaction considerations a major concern. The present study reports data from a human-in-the-loop simulation that evaluated pilot performance, workload, and situation awareness under one of three plausible NextGen concepts of operation. The concepts of operation differed with respect to the allocation of separation responsibility across human pilots and air traffic controllers (ATCs), and automation. Pilots were asked to employ trajectory-based operations to perform weather avoidance maneuvers, an interval management task, and a continuous descent approach. Depending on the concept being tested, they were also given the responsibility of separation assurance (Concept 1) or received conflict resolutions from an ATC (Concept 2) or automated system (Concept 3). Overall, pilot performance on the various flight tasks was worse in Concept 3 than in Concepts 1 and 2. Although pilot workload did not differ across the three concepts, pilot situation awareness was highest in Concept 1, in which the pilots were given the most responsibilities. These findings suggest that keeping pilots engaged in separation assurance tasks may be preferable to having them rely on automation alone.

Acknowledgments

The simulation described in the article was supported in part by NASA cooperative agreement NNA06CN30A, Metrics for Situation Awareness, Workload, and Performance in Separation Assurance Systems. Preparation of this article was supported by NASA cooperative agreement NNX09AU66A, Group 5 University Research Center: Center for Human Factors in Advanced Aeronautics Technologies. We thank members of the FDDRL, CHAAT, SERL, and HISEL laboratories at NASA Ames, California State University Long Beach, California State University Northridge, and Purdue University, respectively, for their contributions to the simulation.