Human Factor And The Air Traffic Controller

In as long as man continues to explore means of maximizing the potentials of air transportation. The need to develop a complementary safe air traffic system will continue to be the core mission of stake holders while the more advanced economy faces the challenges of increased capacity which has led to introduction of concept such as reduced vertical separation minimum (RVSM, CNS/Land and hold short etc. On the other hand most part of Africa, Middle East, South America, and Caribbean suffers from undue influence and civil service constraints etc. To the controller, the core mission has remained unchanged, keeping the skies safe no matter what.
In understanding the topic better let us look at some concepts. Who is a controller? What is human factor?

1. Who is a controller? The air traffic controller is a professional little or nothing is known about, but simply put the man behind the camera. He is a highly trained professional mandated by appropriate authority to give instruction, advise or both by means of radio or light signals to aircraft in the interest of safety.
2. What is human factor? This can be defined as a field of study in which human abilities, limitation and other characteristics are systematically identified for application to the design of equipment, system and job with a view of improving safety, efficiency and well being, it adopts a mult-disciplined approach in fitting the task of the person and draws on many area of expertise including psychology, physiology, anthropometry, biomechanics and engineering. But simply put human factor as the interaction between people and people, people and procedure, people and machines, people and environment. The study of the efficiency of persons in their work environment. Having seen who a controller is and what is human factor. It is seen that human factor tries to bring out the effectiveness of the system that includes safety and efficiency of the well being of the individual person (controller). In this vein, things that interfere with our performance are usually the reasons for making errors, so what is an error? Error is an unintentional deviation from safe or productive performance, it could by system, design, human induced. (more or less mostly due to our attitude) Thus human factor application focus on reducing the causes of errors and designing error tolerant system.

1. procedure and documentation
2. environment
3. shift work
4. management and organisation, culture etc

1. Procedure and documentation:-
   Work schedule, checklist etc (a) do they exist have they been evaluated, useable, consistent, comprehensible, legible, complete. We need procedure and documentation to do our work properly. Procedures do change from time to time that is why we need documentation.
2. Environment:-
   How is our physical environment, organizational etc noise, light, heating, time pressure, accessibility of environment. Etc
3. Shift work:-
   Task and time, (b) adaptation to shift work, shift schedules, age bodily rhythms. Bodily rhythms fluctuate on a 24hrs basis which forms the internal clock that we all have and tell us when its time to wake and time to sleep but, one obvious conflict is trying to work during the night when you are biologically programmed to be asleep, conversely there is a difficulty of trying to sleep during the day when you are biologically programmed to be awake which creates a conflicts between the environment clues and the internal clock: People believe that prolonged periods of shift schedules that the body will eventually adopts, but available scientific data does not support this notion, why? A night shift worker leaves the job (close) get to his car to drive home (if he has one) in the sunlight .The sun light tells the internal clock its morning and it thus reset the internal clock to a day time schedule thereby providing a mixed cue to the internal body clock preventing physiological adjustment to the night schedule.

Age:-
Part of aging process is that the ability of your internal clocks to adjust to time zone changes also slows down with age.

Job fatigue:-
This has been viewed as a simple variable that is correlated with the task and time at work places. Once fatigue set it, performance is eroded. We must recognize that the effects of fatigue are based in brain function. It is equally important to note that fatigue cannot be prevented by personality, intelligence, education, training, skills or professionalism, but being educated about fatigue and how it affects performance may help us recognize it when it occurs i.e. when to quit.

The fundamental problem of what causes the brain to fatigue and performance to fail is not lack of physical strength or endurance, intelligence of lack of professionalism but the brain biological need of rest which leads to stress on performance i.e

1. Cognitive/visual narrowing
2. Limited information in take (say again)
3. Poor planning
4. Over adherence to plan
5. Failure to monitor plan
6. Solving the easy problem
7. Regression-it worked before.

In as much as humans need stress to operate, it is the quality of that stress as well as the quantity that is the issue. Too much stress or highlevel stress for too long we tend to burn out, but if there is too little stress we become board and complacent, either of these situation is undesirable .As controllers we know ATC is not a static environment. Traffic does not move at a constant, dependable rate through the day. It's a feast or famine,(morning departure rush ,lunch rush and late afternoon arrivals. Weather also creates its own rush and avoids etc. These also create its own reactions e.g. adrenaline rush, increased blood pressure and increased heart beat rate.etc and as situation becomes normal these reactions also returns to normal. Our statistic so far shows error or airprox occurs in medium to low traffic situation and by late evening and early morning.

Management and organisation:- Most of our management are more or less militant, make do with what you have, which should not be etc are our management part of the solutions or part of our problem?:- Are equipment provided as at when due (ii) training normal (anticipated) abnormal (unanticipated) Airprox how is it handed (why don't controller write) problems of staff welfare (a)motivation, (b) promotions (c)deployment of staff etc.
Culture, Age, Rank, and Position: -These also influence the air traffic controller in his job. Culture shock can be described as what happens when you suddenly find your self in a place where yes may mean NO or where a fixed price is negotiable etc. while the industry places so much premium on Experience "which you can acquire with age, a certain rank or position. In order words experience may be directly proportional to age. The culture of people permeates their attitude and action. Africa has a submissive culture. In most cases we consider it rebellious for subordinates to question higher authorities.
Although this culture has its positive sides the negative impact on the aviation industry has serious tendencies and could be catastrophic for example controller have suffered imprisonment, dismissal or other forms of abuses by being made scapegoats of incidents that have occurred due to latent failures and human factor issues that are inherent in the system. The African culture of respect for elders should be thrown overboard in the performance of duties and enforcing safety regulatory requirements.

The sum total of culture, age, rank, and position is best demonstrated in the following African management practices and saying that 'A clever needle cannot thread itself, the minor who knows how to wash his hands clean will dine with the elders. He who holds another person on the floor holds himself down as well. These African wise saying are so instructive as they emphasize teamwork, humility, respect and leadership all of which impacts on safety culture of any organisation.

Far from the raucous environment depicted in the film "pushing" an air traffic control room is a quite, tense space where highly skilled men and women individually focus on dots on radar scope or strips on a strips holding bay, each representing an aircraft full of human lives, their jobs stressful at the best of times (one of the most stressful jobs on earth) but now with staff shortages ( global issue), equipment problem, lack of motivation our work environment adding to the pressure, we might ask what and where are the causes of human factor. Most cases of accident and incident are the result of a chain or sequence of events and in ATC errors are seldom attributed to a single cause which we might not even realize how long that chain can be or how far back in time it started. Rarely does an accident or incident have a single cause. Preventing any contributing cause will prevent the accident e.g. the hydro cargo Nov 27 2003). In understanding human factor let us look at this model, the SHELL MODEL

S -Software (procedure work schedule)
H -Hardware (tools, equipment)
E -Environment
L -Live ware (individuals)
L -Live ware (teams)

A right mix of all the variables will bring out the best, impact of safety and more efficient and cost effective performance.

In conclusion, human factor is not going away but should be integrated within the design process; we already know a lot, the problem is to apply it. Which include adequate manpower, urgent reuitment, provision of necessary equipment intercoms, headset etc motivation and encouragement. How come pilots are almost ready to fly at any time of the day or bankers, in spite of long work schedule he is always ready to work because of the right motivation. Management should look into this. Time on the job, I believe that as controller grow older they should stop Night shift, they can still do morning and afternoon with say a day off once we have enough manpower and can review their own shift with the right motivation they will be happier.