People
Ing. Michal Freigang

2023, Human Factors in Transportation, New York, Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics International), p. 539-548), ISBN 978-1-958651-71-1

The work of an Air Traffic Controller (ATCO) involves a constantly changing mental workload and the occurrence of stressful situations to which one must react adequately. Candidates for this profession are expected to demonstrate sufficient resilience and adaptability to such situations already in the selection procedure and during the training process. However, the complexity of Air Traffic Controllers' tasks has increased dramatically in the last decades. A transformation of the ATCO training syllabus was inevitable to ensure the ability of future ATCOs to cope with this changing environment. This change has mainly become apparent in the number of practical skills a trainee has to possess even before initiating the On the Job (OJT) training. Training Organizations are constantly optimizing training processes to prepare a candidate able to withstand challenging situations with varying workloads.To investigate trainees' reactions to increased workload in the context of conducted errors, an experiment was organized examining 30 subjects that participated in a simulator exercise with increasing intensity. The subjects of the experiment were Department of Air Transport students with no particular experience in ATC but considerable knowledge of standards and procedures in air traffic control and familiarity with the simulation environment. It is therefore supposed that the level of skills and knowledge of the subjects are equivalent to student Air Traffic Controllers conducting the basic training. The aim of the experiment was to assess the impact of increased workload, utilizing ECG measurement, on the trainees' performance and subsequent error analyses. The increased workload is achieved by continuously increasing the difficulty of the exercises on the ATC simulator. To analyze, the ECG measurement, data, including R-R intervals, were processed by a short Fourier transform(STFT), filtered and further processed by HRVAS (in Matlab) by time-frequency analysis. Data were processed for Low and High Frequency (individual sympathetic and parasympathetic values). A stress value could be obtained by dividing these two values, which were projectedand plotted against time. Further, error analysis has been conducted, observing 12 categories of errors, including wrong phraseology, application of wrong ATC procedures, separation infringement, and loss of situational awareness. The experiment has shown that the students are prone to conduct mainly errors associated with basic procedures while with time and increasing workload, also errors connected to aircraft separation, situational awareness, and flight efficiency. The results indicate that the most common errors include failure to report aircraft/target identification, failure to confirm ATIS and QNH information for a given airport, descending below the transfer level, failure to respect airspace within vertica

2019, TRANSPORT PROBLEMS, 14 (2), p. 55-67), ISSN 1896-0596

Presented work is primarily oriented on the experimental verification of the influence of fatigue on the psychological condition of the flying personnel, using psychological and performance tests. For the evaluation of a pilot performance, the 24 hours experiment was conducted. In total, eight subjects participated in the experimental measurements. Eight participants went through several tests, including simulator flights, to investigate the effects of the fatigue on the results of psychological measurements. Measurements included workload evaluation, using NASA task load evaluation concept and performance testing, using the so-called OR-test. Significant statistical differences between measurements performed during 24 hours were not found in the case of NASA task load Scores. In the case of OR-test, Friedman ANOVA and subsequent post-hoc analysis show that the greatest decrease in performance was observed in approximately 22 hours of wakefulness, i.e. approximately in half of the measuring process. The concept of 24-hour measurements for the quantification of fatigue is not commonly used yet as well as objectivization using performance testing. As the apparent effect of fatigue is mainly on performance testing results, it can be argued that this work could serve as a basis for further studies on fatigue. Also, it could serve as a support for introducing new pilots' psychological testing procedures in the future, which could contribute to current efforts to improve aviation safety.