ABSTRACT
Air traffic controllers are responsible for the safe travel of multiple aircraft simultaneously. A timely but complex set of commands must be communicated for a safe flight operation, particularly in congested airspace. For example, in 1991 a tower controller instructed an aircraft to hold on Runway 24, intending to clear it for take-off as soon as other traffic had passed. The controller was pre-occupied with making radio transmissions and monitoring other aircraft that caused the take-off clearance to be forgotten. Instead, another plane was ordered to land on Runway 24, which resulted in a catastrophic accident (Aviation Safety Network, 1991). This human error can, at least partially, be attributed to a memory failure exacerbated by multiple tasks that needed to be performed by the responsible controller. The specific kind of memory that was deficient in this case is called prospective memory.
