AN INFORMATION ORGANIZATION TOOL FOR PLANNING IN AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL

A new software interface was developed to aid planning for air traffic controllers. The primary feature of the new interface involved replacing flight progress strips with virtual tokens that were dynamically linked to their radar targets. This experiment evaluated an automated sequencing tool that also was developed to provide a tentative sequencing of the tokens. Five enroute air traffic controllers, who participated as planners, and a subject matter expert, who participated as the tactician, were trained on the use of the flight organizer functions and then created complete or partial sequences for the two primary sequences in four scenarios. Using the automated sequencing tool showed consistent and beneficial effects, including a decrease in the tacticians' workload and more rapid plan development from the air traffic controllers.