Background

A safety-conscious crew needs to know how and when hearing-related issues are likely to affect performance. This Briefing Note (BN) describes the process of hearing and issues that can arise related to it during flight. It will discuss the impact of noise on hearing and how performance is subsequently affected.

Introduction

Hearing has a much greater impact on performance than most people realize. Modern aircraft designs put high demands on vision as the primary sense for information gathering, but such designs can lead to increased attentional demands that have the potential to decrease situational awareness. To compensate, sound has become more important for delivering information or to divert a pilot’s attention to an area that needs monitoring.

At a very basic level, the ability to hear a signal will affect a pilot’s ability to respond to that signal. A signal could be missed because of physical problems related to the ear or because of environmental issues such as noise.