Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-7-2019

City

Dayton

Abstract

Analysis of airliner accidents and incidents identified a class of events in which structurally, mechanically, and electronically sound aircraft decelerated through the minimum safe operating speed to the stick-shaker activation speed. For a subset of these events the automation was no longer actively controlling to the airspeed target, a condition which the Primary Flight Display does not explicitly indicate. Increasing the salience of critical automation information may enhance the ability of the flight crew to detect, recognize, and diagnose when an aircraft will inappropriately decelerate, prior to a speed deviation. In the current study, we designed and tested a modification of the airspeed tape on the Primary Flight Display to explicitly annunciate the absence of active speed control. Our experiment showed that professional pilots were faster at recognizing an airspeed anomaly when using the Enhanced Airspeed Indicator as compared to the traditional air speed tape. No speed/accuracy trade-off was observed.

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