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Essay on Addressing The Communication Issue
Safe and expeditious air traffic depends upon accurate and efficient communications between pilots and controllers. This requirement for effective communication becomes even more critical as the amount and complexity of air traffic increases. In an ideal aviation world, a correct pilot read-back and a flawless execution of the controller's instruction would follow unambiguous controller transmissions. In the real world, however, congested frequencies, faulty communications equipment, pilot and controller expectations, workload, and other human factors conspire to challenge effective communications.
Studies of pilot and controller communications (e.g., Cardosi, Morrow, Lee, and Rodvold, 285-302) reveal an astonishingly low error rate. These studies analyzed voice tapes from ATC facilities and found that less than one percent of these voice communications resulted in a communication error that affected the accuracy of the communication. Such a low error rate is a tribute to the pilots and controllers in the National Airspace System. This does not detract, however, from the potential seriousness of even a single error.
Also, in terms of communication errors per hour, the numbers are quite startling; across ATC environments (en route, TRACON, local control, and ground control) the number of read-back errors on a single frequency was close to one per hour. The first step in reducing the incidence of communication errors is to understand why they happen.
The function of the ATC system is to provide safe, orderly, and expeditious flow of air traffic to its users. In accomplishing this function, the ATC system operates on two fundamental principles. First, the system exists to serve the users. The users are the pilots, aircrews, and passengers on board the aircraft being controlled by the system, plus the owners and operators of the aircraft. Control of aircraft by the ATC system also benefits operations of aircraft not being controlled directly, because ATC operations....
