Studies of planning behavior of aircraft pilots in normal, abnormal, and emergency situations

Planning will become an increasingly central function for the human operator as automation takes over more and more of the manual tasks associated with man-machine systems. In order to understand and aid the human in this role, an experimental methodology for the study of human planning behaviour is needed. Further, a model of the process by which the human plans is desirable. A methodology is presented for studying planning, together with the results of applying the methodology within two experimental investigations of planning behaviour of aircraft pilots in normal, abnormal, and emergency situations. Beyond showing that the methodology yields consistent results, these experiments also produced new concepts in terms of a dichotomy between event-driven and time-driven planning, subtle effects of automation on planning, and the relationship of planning to workload and light performance.