Effects of Automation in the Aircraft Cockpit Environment: Skill Degradation, Situation Awareness, Workload

Commercial aviation has progressed quite a bit from the early days of the 1900's to the present-day period. This progression we refer to is in relation to technological advancements, namely, automated systems. Today we use automation for marketable safety and economic benefits such as fuel savings, enhanced reliability, ease in maintenance support, reduction in crew complement, reduced crew training time, and increased cross-crew qualification among similar aircraft types. However, despite the many benefits of using automated systems in the cockpits of commercial aircraft, there are many existing issues that need to be resolved After more than a decade of experience with these advanced automated systems, operators and researchers are realizing that the benefits that it initially promised have not been fully fulfilled yet. Some aviation researchers have discovered that increased automation may actually be creating new hazards. Amongst those disturbing trends are the ways in which flight crew workload is affected. It was expected that automation would reduce workload, freeing the crew to be able to perform more complex tasks, but contrarily they are finding that most workload reductions occur when work levels are already low. Also, the reduced workload seems to create a trend toward lack of vigilance and even boredom among the crews of highly automated aircrafts. Automated systems can actually increase crew activity during higher workload phases of the flight, such as departure and arrival, distracting the pilots from critical vigilance for outside traffic and awareness of position, terrain, and the general ATC situation. The automation issues which impact safety include, but are not limited to, flight crew workload, reduced situation awareness, degradation of basic piloting skills, and incompatibilities of cockpit systems with the Air Traffic Control system. This paper has focused on three of these existing human factors issues based on their importance as cited in previous literatures. After establishment of the theoretical framework for the mechanisms by which automation impacts these three salient human factors issues, empirical evidence is provided to back up the theoretical observations. Based on the research conducted, we feel strongly on the existence and criticality of human factor issues attributed to imperfect automation. The consideration of these human factors issues in the early design phase of automation will foster the full realization of the benefits to be derived from automation.