A Comparison of Military Electronic Approach Plate Formats

Abstract

Electronic approach plate formats were compared to determine which facilitated the best pilot performance when flying precision and non-precision approaches. Four formats which varied in map orientation and color scheme were flown: monochrome north-up, monochrome track-up, color north-up, and color track-up. Although results revealed a statistically significant difference favoring the track-up orientation in the non-precision approaches, the differences were so small that they showed no practical impact on performance. However, when given their choice of which format to fly, pilot's overwhelmingly flew a color map format. In addition, half of the pilots flew a map orientation of north-up and half flew track-up.

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