Pilot Flying vs. Pilot Monitoring during the approach phase: an eye–tracking study

Abstract

The adequate monitoring of the flight parameters in the cockpit is a critical issue for flight safety. However, little is known about how the crew supervises the flight deck. In this paper, the preliminary results of a project dedicated to analyze pilot flying and pilot monitoring eyes movements collected in full flight simulator during approach phases are presented. First analyses were conducted over 32 approach phases (8 different crews performing 4 approaches each). The results revealed that the pilot flying and the pilot monitoring exhibited similar ocular behavior during the approach. Moreover, the findings suggested that the pilot monitoring’s attentional allocation may not be optimal especially during the short final with low percentage of dwell time on the speed indicator and high percentage of dwell time out of the window.