Searching for Cues: An Analysis on Factors Effecting the Decision Making Process of Regional Airline Pilots

Abstract

Research on aviation accidents and incidents has indicated humans are potentially the “weak link” in the chain of accident causation. The problem faced by researchers here is there is often no clear standard of determining what decision is “correct” or “incorrect“. In addition, the loose coupling of an event outcome and the decision process makes it hard researchers to use accident reports as a reliable indicator of the quality of the decision. The goal of this research is to explore cognitive processes of pilots when dealing with the types of decisions required under time pressure and with conflicting information and how pilots use information as they are performing diagnostic and decision-making tasks in the automated cockpit. Differences were found between pilots with more experience in automated aircrafts however predicted automation bias effects were non-apparent.