Evaluation of ATCO Situational Awareness in a Flow-Centric Air Traffic Environment Using SAGAT

With current airspace infrastructure being stretched to their limits by the increase in demand for air traffic, Flow Centric Operations (FCO) have been touted to be a possible solution to efficiently manage airspace capacity to support more traffic. However, the novelty of such a concept (assigning flights to Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) based on traffic flows) necessitates human factors evaluation in this environment. Particularly, ATCO situational awareness rose to the forefront as a crucial human factor in this arena due to the difference in mental models adopted in this concept. Three fundamental traffic flows, with varying levels of complexity, as determined by a subject matter expert were evaluated for ATCO Situational Awareness. The behavioral results obtained using SAGAT revealed that Situational Awareness for more complex flows were higher, even though participants self-indicated that their situational awareness was lower during the complex flows. This mismatch could be a result of paradoxical complacency during less complex flows, and increased focus during the more complex flows.