Comparison of two interfaces for supporting pilots in airborne self-separation tasks

Due to airspace congestion alternative ways to use the airspace are being sought. Free Flight is an alternative in which the separation task is moved from Air Traffic Control to the cockpit. Current displays do not support the flight crew in such a self-separation task, therefore a new display must be designed. Two different existing designs are considered: the first a conventional design which aids short-term separation assurance. The second a planning tool to prevent a loss of separation from happening in the intermediate-term. These two designs are compared, both from a theoretical point of view and during a pilotin-the-loop experiment. The theoretical comparison is based on the Ecological Interface Design framework. Using this framework, a detailed analysis of the work domain is presented, which allows an objective comparison to be made. This comparison indicates that the second of the two displays is superior. However, the experiment results show that the two displays both support the pilots in self-separation tasks, and that neither display is better than the other.