Effect of Fatigue and Stress on Air Traffic Control Performance

Fatigue and stress are two of the most common degraded performance states of air traffic controllers. They may have potential threat to air traffic safety. In order to analyze the effect characteristics of them on control performance, nine indices were defined and analyzed. A control simulation experiment was designed to collect 22 participants’ control performance data and the data of 19 participants were collected successfully. Four states, sober (SO), fatigue (FA), stress (ST) and fatigue & stress (FS), were designed. According to training regulations of air traffic controllers, nine indices were designed and analyzed, including the average of reaction time (RT_AVG), the standard deviation of reaction time (RT_SD), radiotelephony communication (RC), checking equipment (CE), flight progress strip (FPS), safety awareness (SAA), safety interval (SAI), instruction moment (IM), situation awareness (SIA). Based on the experiment process record of controllers, RT was calculated and the other indices was graded according to specific rule. The analysis results showed that all the indices except CE and SAA were significantly different among the four states. The performance of RT_AVG, RT_SD, RC, IM and SIA of controllers was impaired by fatigue significantly. Under the influence of stress, RT_SD, RC, FPS, SI, IM and SIA became worse. All the indices except CE and SAA were different significantly in FS state compared with SO state. The results indicate that both fatigue and stress can impair control performance in several aspects. Fatigue mainly makes controllers’ execution speed slower and less consideration about the situation. Stress leads to more control mistakes or disorders. These findings are expected to support the recognition of control states and improve the optimization of air traffic controller management.