What meets the eye : Naturalistic observations of air traffic controllers eye-movements during arrivals using eye-tracking

How do air traffic controllers, or ATCos, distribute visual attention and can it vary between controllers? In this study, using primarily eye-tracking data and a couple of on-site interviews, these questions are explored. Two ATCos, with the most similar landings, had their eye-movements recorded with Tobii pro glasses 2 and further analysed by categorizing every fixation into different areas of interest during four landings. Two more ATCos were interviewed briefly during an observational visit to the control tower. The results showed that the ATCos distributed their attention fairly equally between the outside of the control tower and the inside. When attending to something outside the runway was the focus and when attention was inside the control tower the radar was usually the focus. The ATCos differed in their attention distribution by the presumably more experienced ATCo distributing their attention more outside the control tower than the presumably less experienced ATCo. A large number of fixations were not categorized bringing the method of dividing the ATCos eye-tracking view into areas of interest into question