Functional Allocation of Roles Between Humans and Automation for a Pairing Tool Used for Simultaneous Approaches

Aircraft operations on parallel runways continue to motivate research into tools that can improve capacity safely by defining and automating procedures. However, there is no formal process or automation tool today to assist the air traffic controller with pairing aircraft for simultaneous approaches. To address this need, a controller-based aircraft pairing tool to assist controllers in pairing and aligning aircraft for simultaneous arrivals to parallel runways 750 ft apart was developed. Two simulation studies conducted at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center evaluated different stages of evolution of this tool. The respective roles of the controller and the automation tool were adjusted in the second experiment based on the results of the first experiment. Results indicate improvement on all dependent variables in the second study and suggest an implementation in a broader sense in light of the benefits provided by “adaptable” automation (Scerbo, 2001) where changes in the levels of automation are evoked by the user's actions.