Human Factors Advances at Continental Airlines

In Phase IV of the human factors program, two distinct projects have been undertaken. The continuing involvement with Continental Airlines and SUNY at Buffalo on workcard design has now produced a portable computer-based system. This combines the successful improvements to the paper-based workcard (Phase III) with the advantages of a hypertext system allowing multi-level access to documentation for A-check and C-check tasks. Evaluation on the A-check task of landing gear inspection showed the computer-based workcard to be a significant advance over the original paper-based system. The second project was development of a program to audit human factors issues in aircraft inspection. This ergonomics audit program consisted of a sampling plan, an audit checklist, and a computer program to compare audit measurements against accepted human factors standards. Evaluation of the audit program showed that high reliability could be achieved by careful design of checklist items and that automated production of audit reports saved considerable time.