United States Department of Transportation
i
The Use of Weather Information in Aeronautical Decision-Making
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1997-02-01
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[PDF-1.63 MB]
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Edition:Final Report
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Abstract:An investigation was conducted of the values or worth functions pilots attribute to weather and terrain variables in making decision about flight in a single-engine aircraft under visual flight rules. The research employed a scenario-based judgment task designed to elicit pilot worth functions for visibility, ceiling, precipitation, and terrain features (specifically, flight over flat terrain, mountainous terrain, and over water). Subjects were asked to consider a proposed cross-country flight of approximately one hour duration over each of the three terrain conditions. They were then given a deck of cards describing various combinations of ceiling, visibility, and precipitation and asked to first rank order the cards in descending order of comfort with flying under the described conditions over the specified terrain and then to assign a numerical rating to each card using a scale of 0 (least comfortable) to 100 (most comfortable). For each subject a linear model was constructed using the comfort ratings as the dependent variable and the visibility, ceiling, and terrain values as the independent variables. A separate linear model was constructed for each subject for each of the three terrain conditions. The regression weights associated with each terrain type were then subjected to hierarchical clustering to identify groups of weight sets differing significantly with respect to worth function emphasis. Examination of the clusters indicated that pilots could be reliably grouped into four groups for the flat and mountainous terrain scenarios and two groups for the over-water scenario. These clusters are characterized primarily by the average degree of comfort which the subjects expressed in flying under the conditions described, by the nature of their efficiency of utilization of information (multiplicative models compared to simpler single variable models), and demographic characteristics such as age and aircraft ownership.
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