Coping with Computers in the Cockpit

1999

Edited with Erik Hollnagel

Ashgate Publishing Co.
www.ashgate.com 

Another book on aviation automation? Well, perhaps this is not a book on aviation automation per se. It is a book, rather, on how an entire industry is coping with aviation automation. Or more precisely, on how it is coping with the human consequences of automation that it has fielded over the last two decades. The aviation domain, and the cockpit in particular, has always been seen to be on the forefront of technological and human-machine interface developments. From one angle, progress in the cockpit has been enormous, compared, say, with the technological state of the typical enroute air traffic controlcentre. But from another angle, such perceived progress has merely been the wrapping around a large number of unanticipated practical problems‹problems that are now the inevitable by-product of the automation technology that aeroplanes have adopted. Practical problems masked as progress, in other words. This book pulls together a number of chapters from key contributors to shed light on how the aviation industry can cope with computers in their cockpits ‹ from systems design to pilot training.