Functional categories for human-centered flight deck design

The introduction of advanced automation can lead to a situation of flight deck “sophistication” at the expense of losses in flight crew capabilities and situation awareness. Pilot errors continue to account for a large majority of commercial aviation incidents and accidents. Hence, research activities are underway to re-assess the flight deck design process. The fundamental premise of these activities is that a human-centered, systems-oriented approach to the design of advanced civil aircraft flight decks will be required to improve their overall safety. An initial step in this approach is to define the primary flight deck functions needed to support the mission goals of the vehicle. This allows the design team to evaluate candidate concepts in relation to their effectiveness in meeting the functional requirements. This paper describes one set of functional categories that could be used to guide an advanced flight deck design