Flight Allocation in Shared Human-Automation En-Route Air Traffic Control

Allocation is a challenge for higher levels of automation in air traffic control, where flights can be dynamically assigned to either a human or an automated agent. Through an exploratory experiment with six professional air traffic controllers, insight was gained into the possibilities and challenges of human-automation teamwork in an en-route environment. Participants showed high levels of automation trust, but mostly ignored automation-suggested allocations, preferring a highly automated sector instead. Most flights were delegated to automation, after they were given a direct and conflict-free path. Flights handled manually were those requiring level changes or non-standard routing. Future research should focus on establishing specifically which flights can be automated.