Management of multiple tasks: cockpit task management errors

Abstract

A flightcrew's behavior is affected by the set of concurrent tasks they are attending to at any given time, and system performance is dependent on the availability of both human and system resources. If the demands of concurrent tasks exceed the flightcrew's supply of resources or the resources are improperly allocated, i.e., poorly managed, then the flightcrew is likely to exhibit degraded performance, which may adversely affect safety and effectiveness of the aircraft system. This research adopts the view that a flightcrew does not only have to perform tasks, but manage them as well. It assumes that proper task management can be crucial to the successful completion of the flight mission. From this perspective, a framework for Cockpit Task Management (CTM) has been proposed. Based on this framework, a set of CTM errors will be derived from aircraft accident/incident reports and flight simulator experiments. The results of these studies will be used for developing the specifications for a PVI which facilitates the CTM functions. The remainder of this paper describes our research.