Effectiveness of Advanced Collaboration Tools on Crew Communication in Reduced Crew Operations

Abstract

The present research examines operational performance and verbal communication in airline flight crews under reduced crew operations (RCO). Eighteen two-pilot crews flew six scenarios under three conditions; one condition involved current-day operations while two involved RCO. In RCO flights, the Captain initially operated the simulated aircraft alone but could request remote crewmember support as off-nominal events occurred and workload was expected to increase. In one of the two RCO conditions, crewmembers were provided with advanced prototype collaboration tools designed to alleviate difficulties in crew coordination. Crews successfully solved all challenging events without accident and analyses of operational performance did not reveal any differences among the three conditions. In RCO flights, crew communication increased when tools were available relative to flights in which they were not; specifically, there were more acknowledgements and decision-making communications. These results suggest the collaboration tools enable higher degrees of crewmember awareness and/or coordination during distributed operations.

Collaboration And Awareness Amongst Flight Attendants

“…Consequently in 1999, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States permitted aircraft carriers to tailor training to meet their specific needs whereby, under the Advanced Qualification Program (AQP), both CRM and Line Oriented Flight Training (LOFT) were made compulsory for the entire crew (Helmreich & Foushee, 2010;Ligda et al, 2015). Since then, CRM training has evolved into five generations with a history of two decades (Salas et al, 2001).…”

“…These skills are meant to help flight attendants to: (a) avoid error made by humans or machines (b) detect errors (c) mitigate the results of any error (Salas et al, 2001). Studies show that while the CRM training is beneficial, it focuses on critical situations and emergency evacuation and not on non-emergency communication (Helmreich et al, 1999;Salas et al, 2001;Ligda et al, 2015), such as social support (Tang, 1991;Helmreich, 1984), feedback, supervision, and leadership (Algera, 1990). As part of the training to maintain an awareness of the entire cabin, flight attendants are also trained to learn how to use inflight tools for collaborating amongst each other.…”

“…These collaboration tools are important as their availability reflects a high degree of awareness and coordination as analyzed by pilots in a simulated aircraft (Ligda et al, 2015). It is highly likely that in the near future, flight decks will become increasingly automated and communication systems will become more advanced (Travelmail Reporter, 2014;Kollau, 2015;Future Travel Experience, 2015).…”

“…Most teams fare well in monitoring the environment, but they struggle to perceive the critical components that are relevant for predicting the next steps and responses in a timely and appropriate manner (Endsley et al, 2003). This can further create communication breakdowns, increase the teams workload and deteriorate the overall teams performance (Ligda et al, 2015). Thence to maintain a high degree of situation awareness, team members also need to be have prior knowledge to fill the gap in their perception and implications of the given situation (Adams et al, 1995).…”

“…We do not know how flight attendants maintain situation and workspace awareness. In general, there has been studies on how flight crew (Sarter & Woods, 1995;Ligda et al, 2015), anesthesiology (Gaba et al, 1995) and firefighting (Jiang et al, 2004) are able to maintain their situation and workspace awareness, however we do not know how this applies to flight attendants specifically in domestic and international flights.…”