ABSTRACT
The concept of dependability in human-machine systems (HMS) is outlined and applied to the experimental investigation of a prototype system for air-ground data link communication. The experiments were carried out in an Airbus A340 full flight simulator following a balanced factorial design (2×2×2) with the factors communication medium, workload and pilot’s role. It was found that data link communication has a slightly negative effect on the processes related to dependability when the workload is high. The combination of higher workload and data link communication turns out to be a worst condition under many aspects, but dependability remains within the range of variance produced by routine flight situations. It can be concluded that the prototype of a data link communication interface that we investigated is suitable for further cockpit implementation.
