Design And Evaluation Of A General Aviation PFD Symbology Based On Human Factors

Throughout the world, more than 46% of the overall accidents occurring in the general aviation sector occur during the approach/landing phase of flight. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), in 2018, more than 59% of these accidents occurred during the landing phase due to collision with terrain/or an object, power loss, and loss of control. This research focuses on reducing human-made errors by designing a new Primary Flight Display (PFD) symbology in an aircraft cockpit display using a Human Machine Interface (HMI) tool. The symbology is developed using Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA), which simplifies the overall process into various subtasks and builds algorithms to solve the problem. Ryerson Fixed Base Flight Simulator (FBFS) is used to deploy and test the effectiveness of the newly proposed symbology against existing primary flight displays (analog and digital). Finally, human factor evaluation techniques are used to understand the mental and physical workload experienced by pilots using all three displays. Results showed an almost 62% decrease in mental demand and a 53% decrease in physical demand while using the new display symbology.