Decision Errors in the Cockpit

This paper describes an effort to understand the nature of decision tasks in the cockpit, their underlying cognitive requirements, the types of errors associated with each, and how crews can best be trained or aided. A scheme based on cue clarity and response availability was used to identify the cognitive requirements associated with classes of decision situations and to predict types of errors. Data from flight crews in full-mission simulators and from NTSB accident reports were analyzed to validate the analytical scheme.