THE IMPACT OF SECTOR CHARACTERISTICS AND AIRCRAFT COUNT ON AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL COMMUNICATIONS AND WORKLOAD

Means of communication between pilots and controllers is one of the fundamental principles of air traffic control (ATC). Consequently, air-ground communications will both reflect the taskload imposed on the controller as well as drive the workload experienced by the controller. Therefore, analysis of ATC communications could potentially reveal a very rich and detailed picture of the demands placed on a controller in a given sector and traffic situation. This paper reports analysis of ATC voice data obtained from three different sectors at the Indianapolis air route traffic control center (ZID ARTCC). The main purpose of this analysis was to examine how different sector characteristics and the busy and slow periods within the sectors differed explicitly in terms of pilot-controller communications and implicitly in terms of controller taskload and workload. Measures derived from the voice data were also compared to metrics reflecting ATC sector complexity that were derived from the output of the objective activity and taskload assessment program, POWER, developed by the FAA.

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