Investigating Delegation of Spacing Tasks from Air Traffic Controllers to Pilots. Impact on Controller Activity

Controller-in-the-loop experiments were conducted in order to assess the impact on air traffic controller activity of the delegation of spacing task to the flight deck. Three experiments involving a total of 18 European controllers during 7 weeks took place over the past two years. In addition to standard data analysis, a geographical-based analysis was introduced. It consisted in analysing the distribution of manoeuvring instructions and eye fixations as a function of their distance to the sector exit. This analysis confirmed assumptions that delegation leads to anticipate the building of the sequences, and to relieve the controller of maintaining these sequences. Although these initial results suggest a positive impact on controller activity, they still need to be complemented, typically with contextual analysis of monitoring through microscopic analysis of eye fixations.