Helicopter pilots' views of air traffic controller responsibilities: A mismatch

Controllers and pilots must work together to ensure safe and efficient helicopter flight within the London control zone. Subjective ratings of pilot perception of controller responsibility for five key flight tasks were obtained from thirty helicopter pilots. Three types of airspace were investigated. Results indicate that there is variation in pilot understanding of controller responsibility compared to the formal regulations that define controller responsibility. Significant differences in the perception of controller responsibility were found for the task of aircraft separation in class D airspace and along helicopter routes. Analysis of the patterns of response suggests that task type rather than the airspace type may be the key factor. Results are framed using the concept of a shared mental model. This research demonstrates that pilots flying in complex London airspace have an expectation of controller responsibility for certain flight tasks, in certain airspace types that is not supported by aviation regulation

Event prototypes in airline transport operations

Evidence from accident reports indicate that pilots are not always able to categorise events in real-time, which can lead to delayed or inappropriate response. The prototype view proposes that category judgements are influenced by the clearest and best cases of category membership. Flight crew may not always experience events and situations in their prototypical forms. We outline future research on event prototypes in airline transport operations in order to develop better explanations of event judgements amongst flight crew

Blink counts can differentiate between task type and load

Physiological measures have been increasing in popularity due to the growing availability of equipment that allows measurement in real time. Eye blinks are an easy measure to collect using video capture. Our findings indicate that blink counts effectively differentiate between taskloads and task types during a computer based task. Blink counts were significantly lower during the tasks involving high visual load when compared to non-visually demanding tasks. Lower numbers of blinks were observed under higher taskloads across all visual tasks. Paper originally presented international conference on Ergonomics & Human Factors, held 25 - 27 April 2017, Staverton Estate, Daventry, Northamptonshire

Be star discs: powered by a non-zero central torque

Be stars are rapidly rotating B stars with Balmer emission lines that indicate the presence of a Keplerian, rotationally supported, circumstellar gas disc. Current disc models, referred to as "decretion discs", make use of the zero torque inner boundary condition typically applied to accretion discs, with the 'decretion' modelled by adding mass to the disc at a radius of about two per cent larger than the inner disc boundary. We point out that, in this model, the rates at which mass and energy need to be added to the disc are implausibly large. What is required is that the disc has not only a source of mass but also a continuing source of angular momentum. We argue that the disc evolution may be more physically modelled by application of the non-zero torque inner boundary condition of Nixon & Pringle (2020), which determines the torque applied at the boundary as a fraction of the advected angular momentum flux there and approaches the accretion and decretion disc cases in the appropriate limits. We provide supporting arguments for the suggestion that the origin of the disc material is small-scale magnetic flaring events on the stellar surface, which, when combined with rapid rotation, can provide sufficient mass to form, and sufficient angular momentum to maintain, a Keplerian Be star disc. We discuss the origin of such small-scale magnetic fields in radiative stars with differential rotation. We conclude that small-scale magnetic fields on the stellar surface, may be able to provide the necessary mass flux and the necessary time-dependent torque on the disc inner regions to drive the observed disc evolution.Comment: 6 pages, no figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letter

Team project work for distance learners in engineering – challenges and benefits

Team Engineering (first presented in autumn 2006) was the first course (module) at the Open University (OU) to use wikis and video-conferencing in combination to support the work of project teams. Teams of five students, working remotely from one another, tackle an engineering project over 32 weeks. The teams schedule regular meetings throughout the project and these are conducted using FlashMeeting, a lightweight video-conferencing system being developed by the OU's Knowledge Media Institute, KMi (http://flashmeeting.open.ac.uk). Unlike other systems, FlashMeeting requires no software installation. In addition, it not only archives the meetings but also provides detailed analysis of the proceedings. The teams are encouraged to use the wiki facility in the OU's virtual learning environment (VLE) for their collaborative report-writing. The collective work of the team is assessed through these reports. The performance of the individual is assessed through their reflective account of the project. The archiving facility in FlashMeeting has been of huge help in developing this. For the next presentation of the course a learning journal is to be added to the existing means of support. Feedback from tutors and students alike has been extremely positive, whilst recognising the limitations of the technologies in their current implementations. This paper gives an account of the students' achievements and offers an assessment of the pedagogic potential of using these media together

Pragmatic science? Reflections on the academic - industry interactions in a European aviation research programme

In this article we explore the types of science produced and disseminated in human factors research in the cognitive domain. We reflect on the methods and techniques used in the European, Horizon 2020 Future Sky Safety Project: Human Performance Envelope (P6). This project has spanned multiple research paradigms successfully, and engaged academia and research organizations throughout. We discuss the challenges of conducting practically focused work that can also be brought to publication in peer-reviewed journals. Finally, we frame our research contributions within this project using a model of practitioner engagement

The development and assessment of behavioural markers to support counter-IED training

This article describes the method used to develop and test a checklist of behavioural markers designed to support UK military forces during Counter-Improvised Explosive Device (C-IED) training. IEDs represent a significant threat to UK and allied forces. Effective C-IED procedures and techniques are central to reducing risk to life in this safety critical role. Behavioural markers have been developed to characterise and assess non-technical skills which have been shown to be important in maintaining high performance in other safety critical domains. The aims of this study were two-fold. Firstly to develop a method which could be used to capture and assess operationally relevant behavioural markers for use in C-IED training relating primarily to non-technical skills. Secondly, to test the user acceptance of the behavioural marker checklist during military training activities. Through engagement with military subject matter experts, operationally relevant and observable behaviours seen in C-IED training have been identified and their links to stronger and weaker performance have been established. Using a card-sort technique, the content validity of each of the markers was assessed in addition to their detectability in an operational context. Following this assessment, a selection of the most operationally relevant and detectable behaviours were assimilated into a checklist and this checklist was tested in C-IED training activities. The results of the study show that the method used was effective in generating and assessing the behavioural markers using military subject matter experts. The study also broadly supports the utility and user-acceptance of the use of behavioural markers during training activities. The checklist developed using this methodology will provide those responsible for delivering instruction in C-IED techniques and procedures with a straightforward process for identifying good and poor performance with respect to non-technical skills. In addition it will provide a basis for the provision of focussed feedback to trainees during debrief

Understanding pilot response to flight safety events using categorisation theory

Categorisation theory explains our ability to recognise events in terms of a similarity overlap between either a prototypical, ideal case or a stored exemplar derived from experience. Evidence from aviation accident reports indicate that pilots are not always able to recognise flight safety events in real-time and this can lead to undesirable pilot behaviour. Flight safety events may not always arise in recognisable formats, especially as rare and unusual cue combinations are possible. Correspondence with prototypes or exemplars may be weak, creating borderline cases and harming recognition. In this article we extend categorisation theory to develop a new framework which characterises flight safety events. We model three case studies using the new framework to demonstrate how categorisation theory can be used to understand flight safety events of different types. Finally, we propose a roadmap for future research and discuss how categorisation theory could be applied to training or the organisation of flight crew reference material to improve response to inflight event

Now you see it, now you don’t: dynamism amplifies the typicality effect

Some safety events do not stabilise in a coherent state, presenting with transient or intermittent features. Such dynamism may pose problems for human performance, especially if combined with non-typical stimuli that are rarely encountered in everyday work. This may explain undesirable pilot behaviour and could be an important cognitive factor in recent aircraft accidents. Sixty-five airline pilots tested a real-world typicality gradient, composed of two cockpit events, a typical event, and a non-typical event, across two different forms of dynamism, a stable, single system transition, and an unstable, intermittent system transition. We found that non-typical event stimuli elicited a greater number of response errors and incurred an increased response latency when compared to typical event stimuli, replicating the typicality effect. These performance deteriorations were amplified when a form of unstable system dynamism was introduced. Typical stimuli were unaffected by dynamism. This indicates that dynamic, non-typical events are problematic for pilots and may lead to poor event recognition and response. Typical is advantageous, even if dynamic. Manufacturers and airlines should evolve pilot training and crew procedures to take account of variety in event dynamics