We were surprised to find no relationships between operational base variable and the attitude probes. In interviews pilots have commented on the cultural differences between bases and on the differences in the types of flying that are done from different bases. Whatever factors are involved in the formation of attitudes toward automation, they seem not to be tied to the operational base.
Overall, the correlations of the seat variable with the attitude probes was consistent with the differences in duties of captains as compared to first officers.
Since Captains have more confidence and autonomy than first officers, and are in command of the airplane, it is not surprising that they agree less than first officers with the CompanyPressure probe. Captains have usually been with the company longer, have more seniority, and may find the company less intimidating than first officers do. All of these things may lead them to be less influenced than first officers are by the perceived wants of the company. This appears to be an effect of differences in the experience and roles of the occupants of the two seats as mediated by organizational culture.
First officers disagreed significantly more than captains did with the NotReduceWorkload probe. We believe this difference is a result of the nature of the mandated division of labor in the cockpit. This is a complex issue, since pilots generally alternate legs, both captains and first officers assume the duties of pilot flying (aviate and navigate) and pilot not flying (communicate and operate). In many crews, captain and first officer discuss and share decision making. Still, the fact that the authority and responsibility for the flight as a whole and everything associated with it rest with the captain, captains have a wider scope of tasks and their workload includes more areas that are unaffected by automation than is the case for first officers. When a first officer is the pilot flying, he flies the airplane. When a captain is the pilot flying, he flies the airplane and also does all the other things captains do. This may result in the captain perceiving a smaller workload reduction due to automation than that perceived by first officers. Since automation applies to a larger fraction of a first officers' job the effect of workload reduction may be more pronounced for him, leading him to disagree more strongly than a captain would with the proposition that ``Automation does not reduce total workload because there is more to monitor now.''
We must proceed with caution with all of these interpretations however, because the seat variable is confounded with experience and the probes with which the seat variable has significant correlations also have significant correlations with experience level. It is unclear at this point whether the observed effects are driven by the properties of the seat variable or if they are driven by experience.
We found no significant relationships between the military training variable and the attitude probes. This seemed surprising because the differences between military and civilian culture are so many and so strong. It is possible that airline training and airline experience wash out the effects of earlier training experience. In any case, the data from this study do not support a model in which military background or its lack affect the ways pilots view automation.
From a theoretical point of view, we expect that with increasing experience, pilots will come to understand the behavior of the automation better and that they will develop efficient strategies for using the automation. We have observed pilots in the cockpit teaching each other strategies or ``tricks'' for more effective automation use. The correlations of experience measures with attitude probes indicate that as pilots acquire experience with automation, they have better mode awareness, they have more confidence in their ability to manage automation, and they report making fewer errors. The facts that they also report sensing a reduction in workload and spending less time setting up an managing the automation suggest that they may be developing better strategies for using the automation.
Total flight experience does not have the correlations with positive probes that are seen for the measures of automated hours. In fact, pilots with many total hours may worry about busting an altitude in an automated airplane, and seem to think that the training they got for the 757/767 is not as good as some previous training they had. The concern about busting an altitude may appear because the strategies used to avoid busting an altitude in a traditional airplane may not work in a glass cockpit. The attitude among more senior pilots that training was better in the past may be linked to a general perception in the industry of a change in the nature of training over the years. In the first generation of jet aircraft, pilots were trained extensively on all of the airplane systems at a 'nuts and bolts' level. As airplanes became more complex it was no longer possible to teach pilots 'everything'. Instead, training focused on what pilots 'need to know' about the airplane. It may be that the more senior pilots are comparing this need to know training for the 757/767 to the earlier form of know everything training.
The fact that significant relationships exist between the measures of automated experience and the attitude probes indicates that pilots attitudes change as a function of experience with automation (but not as a function of total flight experience). This suggests that much of what pilots know and believe about automation is learned after they leave the training center. We have been told by pilots that they learned 70% of what they know about automation while flying on the line.