Influencing factors of novice pilot SA based on DEMATEL-AISM method: From pilots’ view

Pilot situation awareness (SA) regulates flight safety, and inexperience may impair novice pilot reliability in SA. This study aims to determine the key influencing factors of novice pilot SA and to analyze the interrelationship and interaction mechanism of the factors. We investigated 55 novice pilots trained at aviation schools and identified the influencing factor index system by the Delphi survey. The method of Decision Making Trial and Evaluation (DEMATEL) combined with Adversarial Interpretive Structure Modeling (AISM) was adopted. The results show that: (1) The influencing factor index system includes 18 factors, divided into four categories: individual factors, team factors, task and human-machine system factors, and cockpit environment factors. (2) Team communication, team cooperation, basic cognitive ability, interface design, occupational age and experience, and authority gradient are the six crucial influencing factors. The former three have the greatest association with other factors, while the latter three are most likely to affect other factors. (3) Team communication, basic cognitive ability, and interface design are root-cause factors, of which team communication is the most fundamental. (4) The results of DEMATEL and AISM are consistent, both disclosing team communication as the fundamental factor with the highest priority, and cockpit environmental factors as the direct influencing factors but most susceptible to other factors. The present study can be viewed as a conducive attempt to extract vital influencing factors of novice pilot SA, and to provide ergonomic insights for determining the priorities to improve novice pilot SA in training and aircraft design for flight safety.