An Assessment of Time-Based Active Reminders on Weather Related Behavior and Decision Making of General Aviation Pilots

FAA Technical Libraryhttps://doi.org/10.21949/15244952020PDFTech ReportAhlstrom, UlfRacine, NicoleUnited States. Department of Transportation. Federal Aviation Administration. Human Factors DivisionAvMet Applications IncDSoft Technology CompanyUnited States. Department of Transportation. Federal Aviation Administration. William J. Hughes Technical CenterUnited States. Department of Transportation. Federal Aviation Administration. William J. Hughes Technical CenterUnited StatesAircraftAviation safetyBehaviorDriver support systemsGeneral aviationHazard evaluationWeather routingWeatherReal time informationDOT/FAA/TC-20/41Objective: We investigated pilot weather assessments and pilot ability to assess the out-the-window visibility. Specifically, we assessed the impact of a time-based active reminder on pilot decision-making. The active reminder indicated the amount of time in which a pilot might encroach within 20 miles of severe weather along their route. Background: In a previous study, the WTIC group evaluated a distance-based active reminder to indicate pilot proximity to severe weather. Method: Fifty private pilots participated in the study. The pilots were randomly allocated to either the 10 nm or 20 nm active reminder condition to fly in a scenario with degrading visibility conditions. Results: We found no important differences between the AR10 and AR20 groups with regards to aircraft altitude, AWOS usage, distance-to-weather, flight decision-making, and the ability of pilots to provide forward visibility estimates. This result implies that the difference in lead-time (i.e., 10 versus 20 miles) did not affect the flying behavior of pilots. Both pilot groups flew equally close to hazardous weather cells (i.e., 65 30 dBZ precipitation cells) with a mean distance-to-weather of 9.93 to 17.2 miles (95% HDIs). Even more striking, comparing the present distance-to-weather results with the distance-to-weather data from the Ahlstrom et al. (2019a) study showed that a time-based AR yield a much larger intra-group dispersion (e.g., SD) of the distance-to-weather data, expressed as a greater variability among pilots with regards to how closely they flew to hazardous weather cells.140