Flight Deck Workload and Acceptability of Verbal and Digital Communication Protocols

The Federal Aviation Administration hopes to convert air traffic management to Trajectory Based Operations (TBO), under which aircraft flight plans are known to computer systems which aid in scheduling and separation. However, few aircraft flying today have equipment designed to support TBO. We conducted a human-in-the-loop simulation of TBO using current fleet equipage. Three aircraft equipage levels were explored: Voice (the equipment currently used), FANS (the Future Aircraft Navigation System datacom designed for use in TBO), and ACARS (a datacom system widely used for communication with Airline Operation Centers). FANS uplinked flight plans can be automatically loaded into the Flight Management System, while ACARS delivers text that must be entered manually. Pilots rated various aspects of the procedures. Voice was preferred to FANS, with ACARS rated worst, apparently because of slow response times for requests with datacom. Using a mixture of Voice and datacom may provide the benefits of both.