Why is it Doing That? - Assumptions about the FMS

Abstract

In the glass cockpit, it's not uncommon to hear exclamations such as "why is it doing that?". Sometimes pilots ask "what were they thinking when they set it this way?" or "why doesn't it tell me what it's going to do next?". Pilots may hold a conceptual model of the automation that is the result of fleet lore, which may or may not be consistent with what the engineers had in mind. But what did the engineers have in mind? In this study, we present some of the underlying assumptions surrounding the glass cockpit. Engineers and designers make assumptions about the nature of the flight task; at the other end, instructor and line pilots make assumptions about how the automation works and how it was intended to be used. These underlying assumptions are seldom recognized or acknowledged, This study is an attempt to explicitly arti culate such assumptions to better inform design and training developments. This work is part of a larger project to support training strategies for automation.