The Verification of Pilot Abilities as a Basis for Validating Flight Crew Competency

Abstract

Concern for a macro-based verification and validation of flight crew competency, if extant at all, would be more attributable to changes in the cockpit environment than any holistic concept of human-systems attributes. Much of the contemporary verification and validation activity has centered on the micro-system effects of cockpit automation on flight crew performance. New micro-systems on the flight deck, particularly in the form of electronic flight information systems (EFIS) has resulted in significant changes to crew workload (Kantowitz & Casper, 1988; Billings, 1991), interactive performance (Foushee & Helmreich, 1988), and communication behavior (Cotley, Johnson, & Lawson, unpublished paper). None of these changes in themselves have provided predictive specifications for a macro-based perspective of flight crew performance. Further, although advances in automation have produced significant economic payoffs, such as in reduced cockpit crew size (down about 30 percent since 1959), shortened flight times (through point to point navigation) and decreased fuel consumption, advances in the elimination of human errors in the cockpit are less proven. Analytical and diagnostic techniques available for studying the breakdown of the human-machine interface have as yet produced little significant evidence for a promised reduction in pilot induced accidents (Besco, 1989). This being so, Wiener and Curry’s (1980) concern that, “the question is not whether one or another function can be automated, but rather, whether it should be” (p.2), raises the need for the verification and validation of requisite flight crew abilities in the context of advanced automated flight deck systems. Until the resulting macro-based constructs of such abilities are available, the “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff” approach to defining flight training and pilot competence may not provide the preventative prescription aviation so clearly needs. Thus, the approach to ab initio and airline flight crew development ought not to be one of simply inculcating task generated skills, but rather a search for prescriptive processes in knowledge based structures which denote more competent and highly transferable performances.