Supporting Situational Awareness on Aviation Pilots

Abstract

Nowadays, aviation pilots often use tablets or mobile devices, to perform and help navigation flights. This becomes an issue when ab-initio pilots start to use Electronic Flight Bags (EFB) without any proper training during flight school. Some EFB are available to pilots on digital stores who can buy and install this software. Some available products are among others Foreflight, Garmin pilot and Skydemon often used for visual or instrument navigations. The use of these devices in aircrafts with analog instruments can divert the pilot attention from flying the aircraft, to being focused on changing settings with a head-down attitude, losing situational awareness from the remaining flight instruments. This article makes a review of the current body of literature in this area and analyses the accident data of one of the most important databases in accident investigation in aviation. Some findings point to the key insights affecting Situational Awareness and human-machine interaction on pilots using EFB.