Brittleness, the inability to provide accurate assistance in all situations, is frequently an issue with complex automation and automatic decision aids. This paper examines a method of mitigating the impact of brittleness on overall system function. Using the task of planning an emergency descent for a commercial aircraft, this study found that the presence of contextual information in the presentation of an automatically generated emergency descent procedure might aid in mitigating the effects of automation brittleness. By providing pilots with rationale as to the design of the descent procedure, the pilots were better able to correctly determine why a provided procedure was or was not feasible.
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