An Empirical Evaluation of Tools to Aid in Enroute Flight Planning

After a number of background studies (including surveys, a simulator study, and interviews with commercial air traffic controllers, dispatchers, and pilots), several design concepts have been developed to guide in the design of tools to aid in enroute flight planning activities. Alternative versions of these tools have been implemented in the Flight Planning Testbed (FPT), a part-task simulation environment for studying interactions with flight planning tools. This testbed, which runs on a Macintosh IIfx, presents scenarios and records all interaction with the operators. Thirty commercial airline pilots participated in a between-subjects experiment involving three alternative system designs and four flight planning scenarios. The results provide some very interesting insights into planning strategies and the effects of cognitive tools on those strategies.