The Impact of Sector Characteristics and Aircraft Count on Air Traffic Control Communications and Workload

f communication between pilots and controllers is one of the fundamental principles of air traffic control Consequently, air-ground communications will both reflect the taskload imposed on the controller as well as e workload experienced by the controller. Therefore, analysis of ATC communications could potentially very rich and detailed picture of the demands placed on a controller in a given sector and traffic situation. er reports analysis of ATC voice data obtained from three different sectors at the Indianapolis air route trafol center (ZID ARTCC). The main purpose of this analysis was to examine how different sector characteristhe busy and slow periods within the sectors differed explicitly in terms of pilot-controller communications licitly in terms of controller taskload and workload. Measures derived from the voice data were also commetrics reflecting ATC sector complexity that were derived from the output of the objective activity and assessment program, POWER, developed by the FAA.