HUMAN FACTORS
AIR TRAFFIC TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL 2020 19.
Air traffic control has long
depended on automated platforms
to put key information at the
fingertips of controllers, but now new
schemes for managing hordes of delivery
drones and urban air taxis are pushing the
envelope on airspace management
innovation. If the wizards of Silicon Valley
have their way the innovation will come at a
pace that will challenge civil aviation’s
capability to accommodate change.
It is against this backdrop that David
Woods, one of the leading human factors
researchers in the world and an expert on
flight deck automation, is serving as an
advisor to several air navigation service
providers. Woods has been involved in
cockpit automation research and analysis
for decades at Ohio University. Automated
cockpit studies by Woods and other
researchers in the 1990s with Boeing and
Airbus pilots showed how automation that
is strong, silent and difficult to control can
cause accidents.
And yet, to Woods’s dismay, a new piece
of software that is strong, silent and difficult
to direct is implicated in the recent Boeing
737 Max crashes. Woods believes the
aerospace industry has not been paying
attention to the findings of human factors
research on automated cockpits.
He sees the two 737 Max crashes as cases
of “automation surprise”, when the crew’s
interpretation of what is happening on the
flight deck conflicts with what the
automation is doing, resulting in confusion.
And in the case of the 737 Max crashes,
confusion resulted in the crew fighting with
the automation for the control of the
horizontal stabilizer trim.
Woods sees the Boeing mishaps as a
warning for the civil aviation industry,
Photo: NASA
A Ptarmigan quadcopter, one of 11 vehicles
flown during testing of an Unmanned
Aircraft Systems Traffic Management at
Reno-Stead Airport, Nevada this year