Human Factors and Ergonomics in Aviation¶

Status: emerging
Last updated: 2026-05-31
Sources: 9781119636113.Ch55.Pdf
Tags: [aviation, air-traffic-control, cockpit-design, pilot-performance, automation, safety, applications]

Summary¶

Aviation is the domain in which human factors research has been most respected, prolific, and influential, with concern for the pilot's interaction with instruments dating to 1923 (Landry, 2021). The chapter traces the field from early instrument-comprehension problems through the post-war surge in research driven by increasing aircraft speed and complexity, to modern air traffic control, flight management automation, and reduced flight crews. It treats both cockpit and air-traffic-control human factors, with automation as a recurring theme.

Body¶

Context¶

Landry (2021), in his handbook chapter on human factors and ergonomics in aviation, examines the field from early instrument-comprehension problems through the post-war research surge to modern air traffic control, flight management automation, and reduced flight crews. He treats both cockpit and air-traffic-control human factors, with automation as a recurring theme, and argues that in no domain has human factors research been as respected, prolific, and influential as in aviation. Within this knowledge base the article is an application domain that grounds the discipline's cross-cutting topics: it draws the automation thinking of Automation Autonomy And Ai and Supervisory Control Of Automation into the cockpit and tower, and exercises Situation Awareness, Mental Workload, Representation Design, and Human Error And Reliability in a high-consequence operational setting.

Key Points¶

Aviation has a long human-factors history. The first mention came in 1923, when Hersey wrote that aircraft instruments must be readily intelligible to the pilot and must not make an appreciable demand on the pilot's time or attention (Hersey, 1923, cited in Landry, 2021), anticipating enduring concerns about display design and attention (PDF p. 1, orig. p. 1460).

The post-war period accelerated the field. The greatest increase in the volume and rate of aviation human-factors research came shortly after World War II, when the increasing speed and complexity of flight and flight vehicles made clear that instruments had to be designed for the pilot. Crash rates were high and pilot error a frequent primary cause, so pilots' ability to comprehend instrumentation became a central problem, establishing display comprehension and error reduction as foundational concerns (PDF p. 1, orig. p. 1460).

Automation reshapes the human role. Pilots interacting with relatively simple automation are no longer the situation, given complex flight management automation and the reduction of commercial flight crews. Landry addresses the automation of the cockpit alongside increasingly sophisticated flight management systems, connecting aviation to the broader literature on automation and supervisory control (PDF p. 1, orig. p. 1460).

Air traffic control is treated as a parallel domain, covering the air traffic organisation (PDF p. 11, orig. p. 1470), the automation of air traffic control, conflict detection and resolution (PDF p. 12, orig. p. 1471), and NextGen as the future of the air transportation system (PDF p. 15, orig. p. 1474).

Conclusion¶

Landry (2021) concludes that aviation is a system of interacting human roles — cockpit crew and air traffic controllers — rather than a single-operator problem. The recurring theme is automation: as flight management systems grow more capable and crews shrink, the foundational concerns of display comprehension, workload, and error reduction persist in new forms for both pilots and controllers.

References¶

Hersey, M.D. (1923) Aeronautic Instruments. Section I: General Classification of Instruments and Problems Including Bibliography (No. 125). Langley, VA: NASA. To be validated.

Landry, S.J. (2021) 'Human Factors and Ergonomics in Aviation', in Salvendy, G. & Karwowski, W. (eds.) Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics. 5th edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. landry2021aviation

Open Questions¶

How does reducing commercial flight crews change workload and situation-awareness demands on the remaining pilots?
What human-factors challenges does NextGen automation introduce for air traffic controllers?