Analysing and Improving Pilots' Auto Flight System Mode Awareness

Abstract

This work deals with mode awareness problems of pilots. These are problems, where pilots have a poor awareness about how the Auto Flight System (Flight Director, Autopilot and Autothrust) controls the behaviour of the aircraft. In a first step, this work identifies mode awareness problems and their reasons by means of accidents, incidents and scientific studies reported in literature. The main reasons for mode awareness problems reported in literature include the poor feedback of the cockpit indications about the status of the auto flight system as well as the frequent non-observance by pilots of the available feedback about the status. In a second step, this work analyses the unexplained causes for the two reasons. The conducted analysis reveals and answers why the feedback of the cockpit indications is poor and why pilots do not always use the available feedback about the status. Conducted experiments with pilots in a flight simulator proof the correctness of the results of the analysis. In a third step, this work develops a new concept for the indication of information about the status of the auto flight system that bases on the gained insights of the analysis. Thereby, the new concept eliminates the shortcomings of the current indications. The new concept for the indication of status information was built and programmed in hardware as a new interface of the Auto Flight System and installed in the flight simulator. Further experiments with pilots show that the new concept significantly improves pilots’ mode awareness.