Design of a Cooperative Problem-Solving System
for Enroute Flight Planning:
An Empirical Study of Its Use by Airline Dispatchers

Philip J. Smith*
C. Elaine McCoy**
Charles Layton***

in cooperation with
Judith Orasanu, Sherry Chappell and Ev Palmer****

*Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio 43210

**Aviation Institute
University of Nebraska
Omaha, NE

***Galaxy Scientific Corporation
Atlanta, GA 30345

****NASA Ames Research Center
Moffett Field, CA 94035

January 1992

(Requests for reprints should be sent to: Philip J. Smith, Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory, 210 Baker Systems, 1971 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43210.)

Introduction

In a previous report (Layton, Smith and McCoy, 1994), an empirical study of 30 pilots using the Flight Planning Testbed was reported. This report describes an identical experiment using the Flight Planning Testbed (FPT), except that 27 airline dispatchers were studied.

Five general questions were addressed in this study:

  1. Under what circumstances does the introduction of computer- generated suggestions (flight plans) influence the planning behavior of dispatchers (either in a beneficial or adverse manner)?
  2. What is the nature of such influences (i.e., how are the person's cognitive processes changed)?
  3. How beneficial are the general design concepts underlying FPT (use of a graphical interface, embedding graphics in a spreadsheet, etc.)?
  4. How effective are the specific implementation decisions made in realizing these general design concepts?
  5. How effectively do dispatchers evaluate situations requiring replanning, and how effectively do they identify appropriate solutions to these situations?

... [W]e describe the design features of FPT, the methods used in this empirical study, and our new findings. Because this is a replication of the previous study with 30 pilots (except for the fact that dispatchers were used as subjects), readers familiar with the previous report may want to skip the ... sections on Context, The Flight Planning Testbed, Design Features, and Methods, and begin reading the section on Results and Discussion.

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