PROCEEDINGS of theHUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS SOCIETY 45th ANNUAL MEETING- 2001 EMPIRICAL EVALUATIONS OF PILOT PLANNING BEHAVIOR IN EMERGENCY SITUATIONS

Faced with an emergency aboard an aircraft, pilots must generate a flight-plan to effectively and safely guide the plane to touchdown. However, forming a safe flight-plan is a complex and difficult task. An initial experiment hypothesized that an in-flight planning tool would aid the pilot in forming and verifying flight-plans. Results identified problems with the planner's interface, highlighted the myriad concerns that pilots must address in creating an emergency flight plan, and identified potential benefits with having the system provide a safe plan. Two further studies are discussed in this paper. The first examined whether the pilots ' difficulties came from specific features in the interface or from the inherent difficulty of the task. The second study evaluated pilots ' ability to quickly judge the accuracy of an automatically-generated plan. INTRODUCTION Display Unit (CDU), the pilots can enter a flight-plan using actions that mimic those used during the descent and As preparation for emergencies, pilots are taught highly approach. Once entered, this flight-plan drives an internal detailed emergency procedures. While these rigorous simulation of the aircraft through its future trajectory, taking procedures are helpful in governing immediate responses to into account the actual capabilities of the aircraft. A graphica