Mission Status Graphics: A Quick Look at How You are Doing

Abstract

The flight deck is an extremely complex environment—especially in busy non-normal situations. In an information rich environment, individual details can become compelling, causing the human to overlook others. In such environments, the operator needs a way to quickly assess the situation and return to dealing with issues that are most critical. Polar-star displays may aid this monitoring and preliminary diagnosis. The first polar star consists of mission oriented parameters and the second polar star consists of system oriented parameters. Commercial glass-cockpit airline-line pilots viewed static pictures of various aircraft configuration that included normal, non-normal, and alert conditions in order to see if the addition of the two polar-star displays aided them in monitoring and making preliminary diagnosis about the flight and aircraft status.