Rethinking Pilot Attitudes toward Automation

Ten years after Earl Wiener’s (1989) classic survey of pilot attitudes toward automation, researchers have once again turned to pilot attitudes to measure how pilots think and feel about the automation in the airplanes they fly. Psychologists have measured attitudes as mediators of human behavior for decades based on the assumption that attitudes and behavior are highly correlated (see Abelson, 1972). Thus, how pilots feel about automation is believed to be both a consequence of what pilots experience on the flight deck, and a cause of how they act in the cockpit. Wiener’s (1989) survey was an early attempt to understand how pilots’ attitudes toward automation, in the aircraft they fly, affected flight safety. The introduction of increasingly complex automation in modern airplanes has raised concerns about pilot understanding and use of the flight management computer system. Several other researchers have recently adopted Wiener’s approach (Funk et al 1999, BASI 1998, Wiener, Chute, & Moses 1999). Funk and his colleagues (1999) conducted a major review of perceived human factors problems of flight deck automation. They concluded that pilots may have an inadequate understanding of automation, automation behavior may be unexpected, and automation may place excessive demands on pilot attention. Perceived increases in pilot workload were attributed mainly to the attentional demands of the automation. A Bureau of Aviation Safety Investigation (Australia) surveyed 5000 pilots from the Asia-Pacific region on their attitudes toward automation (BASI 1998). They found in general that pilots were very positive about automation, but that automation can still surprise pilots, most pilots like to hand fly some portion of the flight, and mode awareness can be low. System workarounds were another issue in which pilots had to enter fictitious data in order for the automation to process their request. Respondents also reported that crew coordination, especially communication, on advanced automation aircraft is problematic. A recent report by Wiener, Chute and Moses (1999), reported that pilots held positive attitudes toward automation due “in part to the fact that advanced automation, by the time of this study, no longer evoked emotions of uncertainty and with reservations had proven itself to a skeptical pilot population” (p. VI).