The Effect of Workload and Workshift on Air Traffic Control: A Taxonomy of Communicative Problems

Abstract:

Communication is crucial for air navigation safety: communicative problems are implied in 70% of aviation accidents and incidents. This study investigated the influence of workshift (backward rapid rotation) and workload on air traffic controller (ATCo) communications: a taxonomy of possible communicative errors and incorrectness was designed and a specific grid proposed to analyse the communicative exchanges taking place during the workshifts and under different workloads. The corpus we used to design and test our taxonomy and obtain measures of the communicative performance of ATCos consisted of 10 hours of radio exchanges between tower and approach controllers and pilots in an Italian airport. Results showed that the taxonomy was indeed apt to capture a variety of communicative problems: controllers widely employed a linguistic code strongly deviating from standard phraseology, with a widespread presence of Italian language, of non-standard expressions, ellipses and redundancies. Shiftwork and workload significantly affected the ATCos’ communicative performance: linguistic deviations significantly increased during the nightshift with a low workload, while the most correct exchanges occurred in the morning shift.