Emergency Performance Assessment in Air Traffic Control

Abstract

The article discusses the influence of the human factor in air traffic control on flight safety. Errors made by air traffic controllers in emergencies are explained primarily by lack of professionalism or low stress resistance. Since psychological testing is the first step in screening out candidates unfit for the job, the task of identifying candidates with low performance in emergencies is important and relevant. In order to study methods for assessing emergency performance, an experiment was conducted using the expert and navigator simulators. Also, to analyze the innate component of stress resistance in the participants, personality assessment tests were carried out in order to determine their neuroticism scores. The acquired component of emergency performance was assessed indirectly by comparing how accurately the participants evaluated the risks of potential conflict situations with expert assessments. An analysis was performed of the correlations between experimental results. The experiment was conducted on a sample of 20 fifth-year students at Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation who major in air traffic management.