Pilot Interaction With Cockpit Automation: Operational Experiences With the Flight Management System

Due to recent incidents involving glass cockpit aircraft, there is growing concern about cockpit automation and its potential effects on pilot performance. However, little is known about the nature and causes of problems that arise in pilot-automation interaction. In this article, we report the results of two studies that provide converging, complementary data on pilots' difficulties with understanding and operating one of the core systems of cockpit automation, the Flight Management System (FMS). As vehicles to gather a corpus on the nature and variety of FMS-related problems, we used a survey asking pilots to describe specific incidents with the FMS, and we used the observations of pilots undergoing transition training to a glass cockpit aircraft. The results of both studies indicate that pilots become proficient in standard FMS operations through ground training and subsequent line experience. But even with considerable line experience, they still have difficulties tracking FMS status and behavior in certain flight contexts, and they show gaps in their understanding of the functional structure of the system. The results suggest that design-related factors such as opaque interfaces contribute to these difficulties, which can affect pilots' situation awareness. The results of this research are relevant for both the design of cockpit automation and the development of training curricula specifically tailored to the needs of glass cockpits.