Cockpit Task Management: Preliminary Definitions, Normative Theory, Error Taxonomy, and Design Recommendations

Abstract

A prelJminary formalization of the proce that night crew. use to initiate. monitor. prioriliz • ex cur,and terminate. multiple, concurrent task i pr ent. 1 defrne key terminology and present a preliminary. normative theory of cockpit task manag ment (CTM). An error taxonomy that i applied t th ree Nat ional Transportation Safety B ard (NTSB) aircraft accident reports ' introduced. Recommendation for pilot-vchicl in t rface (PVI) intended t facil itate CTM and an example, prototype pvr tha t W3S effective in improving CTM performance are provid d. In conclu ion. I describe the complementary rc lati n..!Up between TM and cockpit resource manage-ment (CRM. Air (rav I is one f the safest fonn ' of transportati n, yet ea h year hundred of live and rnilli ns of dollars are lost due to air c hes. Accident investigations reve that well over half of th. e accid nl 3n be attributed to errors by the fligh t crew (Nagel, (988). Thi probl m may be partly du to what Wiener 1987) call a "one ox at a lime " approach to cockpit automati n. Conv nlional approaches I under tanding