ABSTRACT
The modern aircraft cockpit allows humans to find safe and cost effective solutions to the problem of transporting large loads over long distances through a hostile three dimensional maze. In this tiny workplace a highly motivated workforce interacts with a very advanced and rapidly changing technology. This new technology is essential on economic grounds, but much of this technology is not accessible to those on the flight deck, humans being distanced, or peripheralised, from essential flight processes (Norman, Billings, Nagel, Palmer, Wiener, Woods, 1988). Part of this peripheralisation process may stem from aircraft design failing to focus on human needs (Wiener and Curry, 1980). In this section, automation induced peripheralisation and its effects are considered as are modulating factors. After a brief examination of aircraft accident types, the interrelationships between automation, peripheralisation, human error and present responses to human error are considered. The consequences for monitoring in the cockpit are discussed.
