Incorporating Procedural Information in a Paired Approach Task

Abstract

This study focused on pilot performance at simultaneously flying simulated instrument approaches and self-separating from an aircraft on approach to a closely spaced parallel runway. The participant pilots flew approaches on Georgia Tech's Reconfigurable Flight Simulator and were instructed to remain within the “safe zone” - an area in which the subject aircraft was safe from collision danger and wake vortices from the other aircraft as depicted on their navigation display. Two underlying bases for calculating the safe zone were used: a “predicted” safe zone utilizing procedural information, and an “actual” safe zone utilizing real-time information. No display effects were found for pilot performance or behavior, despite the very different implications of the two safe zone depictions. Also, pilots monitored the other aircraft closely for compliance, but could not recognize the implications of noncompliance for their own approach. This suggests that pilots have a particular, persistent, and perhaps poor, strategy for this task.

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