An Assessment of Display Formats for Crew Alerting and Guidance

Abstract

During the last 13 years the investigation of crew alerting during non-normal situations has progressed from the study of a single system, altitude monitoring, to a consideration of the total system. The result of this progression is that a highly self-contained system concept has been defined that will facilitate an effective crew response to both normal and non-normal situations. The concept system is intended to not only monitor aircraft systems and flight operations, but also provide improved guidance and status information. The form the information takes will ultimately affect the timeliness of information perception, processing, and crew performance. This paper describes three studies conducted to assess the relative effectiveness of selected display formats in communicating time-critical information to commercial airline pilots. A part-task simulation was used to collect response time and number of errors. Format type, format complexity, and format symbology were varied in this evaluation. Results showed that response to symbolic formats without alphanumerics was faster and more accurate than to symbolic formats with alphanumerics or alphanumeric only formats. These results were incorporated into a full mission aircraft simulator for evaluating the effectiveness of the system concept and eventual incorporation into FAA guidelines for future commercial aircraft.