Designing Flightdeck Procedures: Literature Resources

This technical publication contains the titles, abstracts, summaries, descriptions, and/or annotations of available literature sources on procedure design and development, requirements, and guidance. It is designed to provide users with an easy access to available resources on the topic of procedure design, and with a sense of the contents of these sources. This repository of information is organized into the following publication sources: Research (e.g., journal articles, conference proceedings), Manufacturers' (e.g., operation manuals, newsletters), and Regulatory and/or Government (e.g., advisory circulars, reports). An additional section contains synopses of Accident/Incident Reports involving procedures. This work directly supports a comprehensive memorandum by Barshi, Mauro, Degani, & Loukopoulou (2016) that summarizes the results of a multi-year project, partially funded by the FAA, to develop technical reference materials that support guidance on the process of developing cockpit procedures (see "Designing Flightdeck Procedures" https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20160013263.pdf). An extensive treatment of this topic is presented in a forthcoming book by the same authors

Understanding Pilots’ Explanations of Automation Surprises

Automation surprise may result from inadequate or mistaken “mental models” of the automation (Sarter and Woods, 1995). To study pilots’ mental models of their automation, 202 airline pilots were asked to explain five different events involving unexpected behaviors of aircraft automation. Pilots’ abilities to correctly explain the behavior of the automation differed systematically across the scenarios. The number of complete and correct responses varied from 19% to 86%, depending on the scenario. As the complexity of the automation increased, understanding decreased. Performance on the scenarios was not related to flight experience, automation experience, or source of automation training. But pilots’ conceptions of automation were related to performance on the scenarios. Implications for training are discussed