PLAYING IT SAFE

摘要

Predictable crew performance, especially in peak workload conditions, is one of the major goals for improving air transport safety. In fact, it is plausible to think that the expected overall growth of air traffic, combined with the strong demand for airlines' efficiency, will increase the occurrence of events where the pilots' attention and actions will be required to be at the highest level, especially during the take-off, climb, descent, approach and landing phases. In addition, if certain combinations of difficult-to-predict situations happen (such as difficult meteorological conditions, multiple system failures or cockpit crew incapacitation), the amount of information and actions to process may exceed the reasonably acceptable workload of the crew. As accidents are more likely to occur when workload in the cockpit is high, the improvement of crew performance in such conditions is thus critical to enhance air transport safety.