《2000 s CommentaryThe Outstanding Air Traffic Control Papers》.pdfVIP

Practitioner’s Commentary 305 Practitioner’s Commentary: The Outstanding Air Traffic Control Papers Jack Clemons Senior Vice President Lockheed Martin Air Traffic Management Rockville, MD Jack.Clemons@ Introduction The problem of introducing computer-assisted aids to the air traffic con- troller community to improve safety and reduce workload is both relevant and immediate. The Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) in the United States, the National Air Transport Services (NATS) agency in the United Kingdom, and numerous other civil aviation authorities around the world currently are en- gaged in evaluating, developing, testing, and deploying automated support tools even as these MCM papers were being written. All of the papers correctly identified the two factors that determine automation viability: passenger safety and controller workload. The air traffic controller community is slow to adapt to and embrace new technology. This is not due to some inherent technophobia by this population but rather is driven by professional concern for air traffic safety. Every controller must maintain regular job certification. A serious incident (e.g., a “near miss”) that is traced to an error in their performance can cause them to be pulled from their station and recertified. Air traffic control (ATC) is a three-shift-a- day/seven-days-a-week operation. The entire focus of a controller is on the air traffic moving through the airspace as imaged on her display, and the voices of the pilots in her headset. There is little time to have her attention pulled away from those concerns to learn a new, more complicated series of mouse clicks, or to adapt to a new graphic data format or automation aid. The distraction caused is analogous to that of talking on a cellular phone while driving at high speed on the Interstate—attention is diverted from an exclusive focus on safet