Advanced Technology Aircraft Safety Survey Report - Australian ...

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AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL
FIGURE 82.2
Air Traffic Control appears to be familiar with the descent profile of my aircraft
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0% Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree No Response
Automation's response to ATC requests for information
Figure B2.3 indicates that most crew did not agree that air traffic controllers sometimes asked
for information which is difficult to extract from the FMC/FMGS in a reasonable amount of
time.
This finding proved to be contrary to information received during flight deck observations,
where pilots expressed their concern that not all air traffic controllers were aware of what the
crew were required to do to extract information from an FMC/FMGS in response to ATC
queries. Pilots reported that sometimes the most difficult queries to answer relate to
time/distance/altitude information while at low altitude following takeoff. There is no
suggestion that such requests for information are not justified; however, whereas the response
from the crew of an older aircraft may be no better than an educated guess (based on the
existing performance of the aircraft), the crew of modern aircraft are more likely to rely on the
calculations of the FMC. Difficulty may arise when the crew are required to use data outside
the programmed flight-planned data.
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