Who or What Saves the Day? A Comparison of Traditional and Glass Cockpits

This study examined incidents reported to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System from a novel perspective: rather than focusing on the factors contributing to or causing incidents, this study concentrated on who and what (subsystems and information) enabled the recovery from an anomaly. Incident reports describing altitude deviations were classified as to cockpit type (glass or traditional), flight phase, agent restoring safety, and cockpit subsystems providing specific information that helped restore safety. The data revealed and quantified the agents, information, and factors that “saved the day. ” The flight crews used many sources of information to detect the altitude deviations: altimeter, outside scene, altitude alert, kinesthesia, attitude, and communications monitoring. In the glass cockpits the crews also used the map display and autothrottles to detect deviations from assigned altitudes. There was an interaction between the person detecting the anomaly (controller/flight crew) and the type of cockpit. Glass cockpit flight crews detect proportionally more deviations than their counterparts in traditional cockpits, while controllers tend to detect more deviations involving traditional cockpits. There was no effect of cockpit position (captain/first officer). A model that details the flow of altitude information between air traffic control, flight crews, and cockpit subsystems was developed and validated. This model identifies strengths and weaknesses in the flow of altitude information within the current ground/air system