Decision-Making in the Air Traffic Control Domain: Mitigating Workload and Stress

Abstract

The United States National Airspace System is a busy, complex and dynamic environment in which air traffic controllers are responsible for the safe, orderly and expeditious movement of aircraft. Air traffic controllers must make a continuous stream of decisions under the duress of time and safety. Although a significant body of research is available regarding air traffic control cognition in the fields of attention, vigilance, automation, memory and sensory modalities, little research is dedicated to decision-making. Intuitive and rapid decision-making as characterized by System 1 cognitive processes is applicable to air traffic control. Heuristics assist in this intuitive decision-making. However, heuristics may create flawed or biased decisions. Therefore, expertise is required to overcome the inherent risks in heuristics. Rather than focus and compare individual aircraft, the expert air traffic controller chunks similar information into sector events. In addition to economic use of working memory, the sector event paradigm enables the expert air traffic to intuitively compare the current event against a history of experience with similar events. As a result, the expert air traffic controller effortlessly determines the proper actions seemingly applying that action without active decision-making.

Author

• McCormick, Michael J, PhD Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Keywords

• Decision-Making
• Heuristics
• Expertise
• Cognition
• Air Traffic Control
• Cognition and Perception
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Science