FAA Office of Aerospace Medicine
Civil Aerospace Medical Institute
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Report No: DOT/FAA/AM-01/16

Title and Subtitle: Planning in Air Traffic Control

Report Date: October 2001

Authors: Gronlund, S.D., Dougherty, M.R.P., Durso, F.T., Canning, J.M., and Mills, S.H.

Abstract: An experiment was conducted to examine the planning activities of en route air traffic controllers. Controllers were placed in the role of planners and verbalized a plan for controlling traffic to a tactician (another controller) who implemented it. Planning, which is typically tacit, was thereby made explicit by distributing it across these two individuals. Verbalizations from the planner to the tactician were coded and summarized. The direction of plan management and the degree of plan systematicity were influenced by the phase of the planning process and the predictability of the problem/environment.

For the more-predictable problems, planning began with a bottom-up picture building phase followed by a top-down plan development phase. The less-predictable problems also began as a bottom-up process, but management of the subsequent phases was characterized by equivalent bottom-up and top-down contributions. In addition, planning was more systematic for the more-predictable problems. This understanding of the planning activities of controllers can serve as an antecedent to the development of computer tools to aid planning.

Key Words: Planning, Verbal Protocols, Air Traffic Control

No. of Pages: 25