Several spectacular aircraft collisions, one on the ground at Tenerife, Canary Islands, and mid-airs at Memphis and San Diego, have brought into question the adequacy of present air traffic control systems. Following the San Diego collision in September 1977, between an air carrier B-727 and a Cessna 172, there has been a hue and cry to “do something”. Among the many proposed “solutions” have been tighter restrictions on VFR aircraft, stricter control of mixed IFR and VFR traffic, development of airborn collision avoidance systems, and creation of reliever airports. There has been little recognition of the basic problems of human factors in aircraft collisions. This paper examines collisions from a human factors perspective, seeing them primarily as “system-induced errors” resulting from control systems that stress regulation and airspace allocation, and do not properly consider the human operator. To avoid future accidents, system designers must consider such topics as basic assumptions in air traffic control, mixed IFR and VFR navigation, pilot-controller and controller-controller communications, extra-cockpit vision, workload of pilots and controllers, proposed regulations, and instrumentation.
Improving speech recognition models with small samples for air traffic control systems
