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Air Traffic Control communication is an act of collaboration between pilots and controllers, and the success of this collaboration depends on how smoothly speakers and listeners work together. For example, we have found that the way controllers deliver ATC messages influences how easily pilots understand these messages, which in turn determines how much time and effort is needed to successfully complete the transaction. We first introduced a collaborative framework for investigating air ground comunication and then describe a set of field and laboratory studies that investigated ATC communication. We focused on the impact of ATC message factors (e.g., length and timing) on the cognitive processes involved in ATC communication. These studies also illustrate how the collaborative framework helps analyze the impact of proposed visual data link systems on ATC communication.

Although pilot-controller communication is central to aviation safety, this area of aviation human factors has not been extensively researched. Most research has focused on what kinds of communication problems occur. A more complete picture of communication problems requires understanding how communication usually works in routine operations. In the present paper, we describe our investigation of a sample of routine pilot-controller communication in the TRACON environment. After describing several dimensions of routine communication, we focus on three kinds of communication problems: Inaccuracies such as incorrect readbacks, Procedural deviations such as missing callsigns and readbacks, and Nonroutine transactions where pilot and controller must deal with misunderstandings or other communication problems. Preliminary results suggest these problems are not frequent events in daily operations. However, analysis of the problems that do occur suggest some factors that may cause them.