Available Operational Time Window: A Method for Evaluating and Monitoring Airline Procedures

Abstract

Time is a widely accepted means for evaluation of procedures used in the management and control of complex, dynamic systems, such as airliners. Time provides a common unit of measurement of operator performance in the context of the task in both naturalistic and experimental conditions. Time is also correlated with errors, operational efficiency, and task loading. Analytical and simulation methods used for the design and evaluation of procedures require information on the allowable operational time window (AOTW). For complex, dynamic systems, such as airliners, the AOTW exhibits a high degree of variance. The statistical properties of the AOTW have not been readily available to designers. The recent availability of flight data monitoring/flight operations quality assurance, typically used for aircraft performance and maintenance purposes, provides the means to characterize the statistical properties of the AOTW. This paper describes an analytical method to characterize the statistical properties of the AOTW (e.g., 5th percentile) for use in the design and evaluation of procedures. The method is demonstrated in a case study of an airline takeoff procedure.

Keywords

airline standard operating procedures airline operations human–automation interaction human factors procedures standard operating procedures

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Barshi

Mauro

Degani

Loukopoulou

(2016). Designing flightdeck procedures (NASA/TM-2016–219421). Washington, DC: NASA.

Degani

Heymann

Shafto

(1999). Formal aspects of procedures: The problem of sequential correctness. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 43rd Annual Meeting (pp. 1113–1117). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Degani

Wiener

(1997). Procedures in complex systems: The airline cockpit. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics–Part A: Systems And Humans, 27, 302–312.

Card

S. K.

Moran

T. P.

Newell

(1980). The keystroke-level model for user performance time with interactive systems. Communications of the ACM, 23, 396–410.

De Keyser

(1995). Time in ergonomics research. Ergonomics, 38, 1639–1660.

Gawron

V. J.

(2000). Human performance measures handbook. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hollnagel

(1998). Cognitive reliability and error analysis method: CREAM. Oxford, UK: Elsevier.

John

Vera

Matessa

Freed

Remington

(2002). Automating CPM-GOMS. In Proceedings of CHI ’02 (pp. 147–154). New York, NY: ACM.

Kourdali

Sherry

(2016, September). A system engineering method for analysis and simulation of standard operational procedures. Paper presented at 2016 HCIAero, Paris, France.

10.

Laudeman

I. V.

Palmer

E. A.

(1995). Quantitative measurement of observed workload in the analysis of aircrew performance. International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 5, 187–198.

11.

Learmount

(1994, August 10–16). A330 crash caused by series of small errors. Flight International, p. 6.

12.

Patton

E. W.

Gray

W. D.

(2010). SANLab-CM: A tool for incorporating stochastic operations into activity network modeling. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 877–883.

13.

Raby

Wickens

C. D.

(1994). Strategic workload management and decision biases in aviation. International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 4, 211–240.

14.

Rothrock

(2001). Using time windows to evaluate operator performance. International Journal of Cognitive Ergonomics, 5, 1–21.

15.

Stimpson

A. J.

Ryan

J. C.

Cummings

M. L.

(2016). Assessing pilot workload in single-pilot operations with advanced autonomy. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 60th Annual Meeting (pp. 675–679). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.