A Tale of Two Simulations – the Challenges of Validating a Ground-Air Collaborative Safety Alert

A new alert to help commercial pilots avoid severe wake turbulence from other aircraft is under development in a project called SAFEMODE, which has the aim of integrating Human Factors into the design stage of development. The potential wake vortex encounter is predicted on the ground and flagged to the air traffic controller handling the affected traffic, who then orally passes a Caution message to the flight crew of the aircraft likely to encounter the turbulence. This enables them to anticipate the wake (reducing startle response and potential loss of control) and secure the cabin. The operational concept for the alert is therefore collaborative in nature, in essence a two-step ‘tandem’ operation. A two-stage validation approach was therefore utilized: a real-time, high fidelity simulation with controllers on the ground, and an equally high-fidelity simulation with airline pilots in a full-scope moving flight cockpit simulator. Validation data collected included controllers’ and pilots’ behavioural (eye-tracking), subjective (self-report), and neurophysiological (brain activity and skin conductance) responses during the simulations under the different experimental conditions (e.g., with vs. without the Wake Vortex Alert system). Preliminary results indicate that the alert leads to improved performance in handling the wake turbulence event and in securing the cabin. The results also show the utility of a Human Factors approach to such simulations.