Status: COMPLETED

Background

The purpose of this Safety Enhancement is to outline research to be conducted by the aviation community (government, industry and academia) to develop and assess training methods and realistic scenarios that can address the attention-related human performance limitations observed in the airplane state awareness (ASA) event data, including channelized attention, confirmation bias, and startle/surprise, with accompanying performance measures.

A Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) study of 18 loss-of-control accidents and incidents showed that issues with flight crew attention were involved in 16 of the 18 events. The aviation community should conduct research on methods for understanding the phenomena of flight crew channelized attention, confirmation bias, startle/surprise, and diverted attention.