The human factors of FMS usage in the terminal area

Abstract

The development of advanced automation for arrival aircraft into the terminal area is being investigated for both the air traffic control (ATC) and airborne environments. For the automation to be effective and provide the best advisory information, aircraft trajectories must be accurately estimated. One way to enhance the aircraft's adherence to the trajectories assumed by advanced ATC automation is to supply trajectory information to the pilots. Such information is currently provided by ATC to pilots through voice communication. Providing the advisories to the pilots via their Flight Management Systems (FMS) could help improve the timeliness of the advisories, especially in a time-critical terminal area environment. To successfully implement the FMS for use in the terminal area, human factors issues such as pilot workload and the usability and understandability of the information presented via the FMS must be addressed. This study examines the human factors aspects of FMS usage strategies by commercial airline crews flying a Boeing 747-400 full-motion simulator in a terminal area flight segment. Results indicate that FMS-guided flight in the terminal area creates significantly higher amounts of individual crewmembers' head-down time, and increased levels of self-reported workload compared to conventional navigational means.

FMS for Unmanned Aerial Systems: HMI Issues and New Interface Solutions

“…In particular these problems are strictly related to the FMS, that is the core of the automation. The main issues of the human-automation interaction are [8,9,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]:…”

Conventional Training Versus Game-Based Training

“…As with many tasks, most pilots can perform FMS tasks adequately in routine, lowpressure situations, such as during an uneventful cruise phase of flight. But pilots can experience great difficulty and an increase in errors when they have to program the FMS in high-pressure situations, such as when readying the plane for take off, preparing for approach, or when some external event occurs, such as having to deal with poor weather or messages from Air Traffic Control (ATC) requesting deviations from the flight plan (Lee, Sanford, and Slattery, 1997). Our review of the ASRS incident reports indicated that FMS errors indeed occur often under these demands.…”