Effect of Fatigue in Air Traffic Controllers’ Workload, Situation Awareness, and Control Strategy

Abstract

Objective: To illustrate how fatigue affects the workload, situation awareness, and control strategy of air traffic controllers. Background: As air traffic control becomes more complex and demanding due to the increasing number of aircraft movements in major airport hubs, the need to particularly look into the interplay of performance shaping factors has also intensified. Despite the previous efforts of scholars to understand the framework of air traffic control based on factors on workload and situation awareness (SA) and its impact to shift in control strategy, the role of fatigue in such factors is ignored notwithstanding its relative impact on air traffic controllers as tasks are carried out in varying workload and work shift. Method: A case study is conducted in an actual tower control center in the Philippines to demonstrate the hypothesized relations among fatigue, workload, SA, and control strategy. Questionnaires based on SPAM, SASHA, Samn-Perelli fatigue scale, and visual attention self-report are deployed to measure air traffic controllers’ fatigue levels, SA, and control strategy. Results: Fatigue has an inverse relationship with workload and has a significant effect on SA. Furthermore, fatigue is also found to have a significant relationship with some areas of interest including visual display terminal. Conclusion: Such results underpin the resource allocation decisions of stakeholders in the commercial aviation industry geared toward fostering the welfare of air traffic controllers.