Analysis of communication in the standard versus automated aircraft

Past research has shown crew communication patterns to be associated with overall crew performance, recent flight experience together, low-and high-error crew performance and personality variables. However, differences in communication patterns as a function of aircraft type and level of aircraft automation have not been fully addressed. Crew communications from ten MD-88 and twelve DC-9 crews were obtained during a full-mission simulation. In addition to large differences in overall amount of communication during the normal and abnormal phases of flight (DC-9 crews generating less speech than MD-88 crews), differences in specific speech categories were also found. Log-linear analyses also generated speaker-response patterns related to each aircraft type, although in future analyses these patterns will need to account for variations due to crew performance.