The Psychology of Air Traffic Control: How our Human Factors Team Supports Controllers

Ensuring the safety and efficiency of air traffic control isn’t just about cutting-edge technology — it’s also about understanding the people behind it. That’s where our Human Factors team comes in. We apply psychology and ergonomics to improve our performance, identify potential problems and support the wellbeing of our colleagues who do a vital job in keeping our skies safe.

Human Factors is the study of how people interact with systems, technology, and environments to improve safety, performance and wellbeing. It is also the science of applying knowledge on human capabilities and limitations to the design of work – whether that’s tools, processes or people. It is a practice used across all industries to help create a safer, more efficient and user-friendly workplace.

The Human Factors discipline is currently undergoing changes as to how the work is spread. Some feel it is trying to encompass too much and that soon, we might see it split into two groups – one that is focussed on the traditional role of Human Factors in system design and assurance, and one that is concentrating on behaviours and culture change – Human Performance.

Our team at NATS has embraced both aspects of the discipline and as well as a Human Performance team and a Design and Assurance team, we also have a Strategy and Development team to focus on future technologies.

Our Human Performance team is tasked with projects that investigate fatigue risk management, wellbeing and resilience, safety cultures and behaviours and human performance coaching and measurement. This team has recently been working on a project to create a fatigue dashboard, helping to track and report levels of fatigue across our operational teams. As well as this, the team have been rolling out a biomathematical modelling tool which will provide predictive fatigue data to inform and influence future risk management activities.

Our Design and Assurance team look at system and process design and change assurance which aims to ensure proposed changes give our people the best chances of achieving desirable outcomes. One recent piece of work this team has undertaken was looking at how workload levels of ATCO’s would be impacted with the introduction of new technologies like Pairwise and Advanced Mixed Mode. These two tools, designed to reduce holding time by increasing the approach efficiency and landing rate, were initially found to increase workload unrealistically during early morning rush-hour periods at Heathrow. To address this, we used the shadowing suite to demonstrate the tools in a realistic setting, which helped build controller confidence. We closely monitored operations after implementation, ensuring the equipment could be introduced without creating unsustainable pressure on resourcing or airspace.

Finally, the Strategy and Development team focuses on creating future solutions which harness the strengths of humans and technology, enabling synergy between the two. A particular project that this team is responsible is our eye-tracking work which is enabling us to collect data from the eye movements of our ATCO’s to help us understand and manage fatigue and performance in this highly-pressed job.

In a recent edition of our live stream programme, Altitude I discussed in more depth what Human Factors is, and what we’re responsible for at NATS. You can view it here.

NATS Altitude – Episode 29 – The Human Factor