ABSTRACT
The human task of taking a vehicle airborne, navigating and landing in a safe manner has traditionally been studied comprehensively at micro-level (e.g Chapanis early work on cockpit displays and human error), or at a more generic macro cognitive and behavioural level, leading to the development of concepts such as Wicken’s (1983) mental resource theory and Endley’s (1993) situation awareness theory. The latter theories, in particular, have been widely accepted as valid models of internal processing and response from a human operator during a given task in a given technical environment, and have greatly expanded their application outside the remit of aviation human factors and ergonomics.
