Experimental Investigation of Flight Crew Strategies in Handling Unexpected Events

This paper reports a flight simulation study where airline flight crews were to handle unexpected situations, as part of the “Manual Operations for 4th Generation Airliners” (Man4Gen) EU research project. The analysis of their behaviour combined a cognitive systems engineering perspective with behavioural analysis methods used in aviation industry. Hollnagel’s Contextual Control (COCOM) and Extended Control (ECOM) Models are applied to examine the strategies with which the flight crew responded to the simulated events. The outcome of this analysis is combined with the results of industry expert analysis of the actions that flight crew were expected to perform. ECOM illustrates the different strategies applied to handling the situation