Human Factors and Teamwork in Air Traffic Control
Frameworks to name
SHELL maps the liveware (the controller) against software, hardware, environment and other liveware. Reason's Swiss cheese model shows how latent conditions and active failures line up to breach defences. Situational awareness has three levels: perception, comprehension and projection - most 'sudden' incidents are failures of projection.
Everyday human factors
Fatigue degrades vigilance and slows recovery from error; workload peaks at handover, runway change and weather deterioration; expectation bias makes controllers hear the clearance they expected rather than the one issued; complacency follows long uneventful periods. Team resource management covers briefing, workload sharing, closed-loop communication, assertive challenge and structured handover using an agreed checklist.
Traps
'Human error can be eliminated' - false; it can be managed. 'Just culture means no blame' - false; it distinguishes error from recklessness. Blaming the last person in the chain, confusing boredom with fatigue, and assuming that a quiet sector is a low-risk sector.
Rule of thumb
Use closed-loop communication: instruction - readback - verification - correction if needed. If you did not hear the readback, you did not issue the clearance.
Worked example
During a runway change at a busy TMA, the approach controller's mental model still holds the old sequence. A two-minute brief covering the new sequence, the go-around plan and who owns the runway produces a shared model and is faster than recovering from a conflict.