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After a lot of aircraft accident youtube videos, I can think of a couple where people misunderstanding where their computers get their information from and how

After a lot of aircraft accident youtube videos, I can think of a couple where people misunderstanding where their computers get their information from and how they work. * This one where the operations team apparently doesn't understand how their flight tracker works, and/or it fails to inform their users that last contact was X hours ago. * One where the aircraft has a broken altimeter, and the suspicious pilots decide to ask the ATC for altitude confirmation, but the ATC radar only gets horizontal coordinates, the altitude information that ATC sees actually comes from a datastream from the aircraft itself. So they fatally decided to trust that instead of their own aircraft radar altimeter which was correctly telling them they were about to crash. * The aircraft had either a single failed engine or the wheels were stuck outside, and the pilots asked the computer for how far they could travel in their current state, assuming it worked like a car, by projecting current consumption, but actually the computer just uses fixed data that does not take such exceptional situations into account. So they ran out of fuel early. > “ATSB chose to assume that the plane spiraled in close to the seventh arc because it had not received enough funding to extend the width of the search area to 100 nautical miles.” > WAT. It seems the police department has insufficient funding to help drunks look for keys in the dark.

carlmr 2y ago
You could of course blame the individuals for not knowing where which information comes from, but that wouldn't help in avoiding such problems in the future. I think it's a UX failure in some sense. It's important information to know which number comes from what source. So it should be clearly visible if a trajectory is prediction without up to date positional data. It should be clearly visible which values are from the aircraft and which are from the ground. It should be clearly visible that a range estimate is derived only from fuel sensors. I hope that the 5Y process or whatever they used came to this conclusion as well, and not human error. Human error is constant, design issues can be fixed. Sometimes I think UX design should be mandatory for software developers and engineers. Even only reading The Design of Everyday Things would probably prevent a lot of catastrophes.
- krisoft 2y ago
  > Sometimes I think UX design should be mandatory for software developers and engineers. Human Factors is very much part of every airplane's design. From the ground up, and it involves all roles and every subsystems. > Even only reading The Design of Everyday Things would probably prevent a lot of catastrophes. I think you have a twisted assumption about how much care goes into aviation UX. The people who do these designs did much more than read a single book. > It should be clearly visible that a range estimate is derived only from fuel sensors. Good plan! Now tell us how you will do it. (Also clearly you are misunderstanding even the problem. The problem was that the range estimate was NOT derived from fuel sensors.)
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    > Good plan! Looking at an aircraft cockpit I see Billions of Buttons https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BillionsOfButtons https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BillionsOfButton... Would writing the equation, data sources, and output format for each of those buttons on the button be good UX? No, I agree with you, this is not a UX problem it's a training one - a test question along the lines of "How does fuel prediction work on a B790" etc ...
    - krisoft 2y ago
      Exactly. Now if we decide that on some type of aircraft we will display both kind of information to the pilots then it is a user interface task how to present these two similar but different information in such a way that it is clear which one is which.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Looking at an aircraft cockpit I see Billions of Buttons Not true for glass cockpits. While there is a lot of skeuomorphism in avionic UI, there is also a good amount of situation-driven dynamism. Modern GA avionics' fuel estimates are pretty much on the money given a flight plan.
  - carlmr 2y ago
lxgr 2y ago
Which incident are you referring to with the altitude confusion example?
- aaronmdjones 2y ago
  Aeroperu 603.
  - beerandt 2y ago
    Not knowing your altimeter is connected to your transponder, and that you provide the altitude along with your squawk to the atc screens is a pretty glaring wtf.
    - coredog64 2y ago
      ATC does have access to radar that locates aircraft via skin paint. TBH, I’d push that back on ATC. If I’m confused about my altitude, it’s not because I suddenly can’t read the numbers on the dial. ATC should understand that the confusion can be resolved by checking with an outside source.
      - lxgr 2y ago
        What do you mean by “skin paint”? Civil primary radar usually isn’t 3D and does indeed depend on transponder, i.e. secondary radar, supplied altitude data. They should know what their radar supports in any case, and get suspicious when an aircraft asks them for a readback of airplane-supported altitude data.
      - aaronmdjones 2y ago
        Primary radar as used by ATC is extremely limited. It is not designed to identify targets at all; nor does it have particularly good vertical resolution. It can tell you where in 2D space a plane is, but without secondary radar and a cooperating transponder, it can't tell you what plane it is, and its uncertainty with respect to altitude can be several thousand feet.
    - 2y ago
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> the operations team apparently doesn't understand how their flight tracker works The operations team didn't have a flight tracker. The Flight Explorer website is a free consumer tool [1]. The actual flight tracking software is native [2]. Malaysia Airlines' flightops was essentially using Google Flights to track their planes. That's the WTF. > actually the computer just uses fixed data that does not take such exceptional situations into account I've never flown a 777. But modern GA flight computers, e.g. G1000, are pretty advanced about projecting fuel consumption. (Of course, this wasn't always the case [2].) [1] https://travel.flightexplorer.com https://travel.flightexplorer.com [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider [2] https://www.flightexplorer.com/products/professional/FE-Professional.pdf https://www.flightexplorer.com/products/professional/FE-Prof...

carlmr 2y ago

You could of course blame the individuals for not knowing where which information comes from, but that wouldn't help in avoiding such problems in the future. I think it's a UX failure in some sense. It's important information to know which number comes from what source. So it should be clearly visible if a trajectory is prediction without up to date positional data. It should be clearly visible which values are from the aircraft and which are from the ground. It should be clearly visible that a range estimate is derived only from fuel sensors. I hope that the 5Y process or whatever they used came to this conclusion as well, and not human error. Human error is constant, design issues can be fixed. Sometimes I think UX design should be mandatory for software developers and engineers. Even only reading The Design of Everyday Things would probably prevent a lot of catastrophes.

krisoft 2y ago
> Sometimes I think UX design should be mandatory for software developers and engineers. Human Factors is very much part of every airplane's design. From the ground up, and it involves all roles and every subsystems. > Even only reading The Design of Everyday Things would probably prevent a lot of catastrophes. I think you have a twisted assumption about how much care goes into aviation UX. The people who do these designs did much more than read a single book. > It should be clearly visible that a range estimate is derived only from fuel sensors. Good plan! Now tell us how you will do it. (Also clearly you are misunderstanding even the problem. The problem was that the range estimate was NOT derived from fuel sensors.)
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  > Good plan! Looking at an aircraft cockpit I see Billions of Buttons https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BillionsOfButtons https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BillionsOfButton... Would writing the equation, data sources, and output format for each of those buttons on the button be good UX? No, I agree with you, this is not a UX problem it's a training one - a test question along the lines of "How does fuel prediction work on a B790" etc ...
  - krisoft 2y ago
    Exactly. Now if we decide that on some type of aircraft we will display both kind of information to the pilots then it is a user interface task how to present these two similar but different information in such a way that it is clear which one is which.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Looking at an aircraft cockpit I see Billions of Buttons Not true for glass cockpits. While there is a lot of skeuomorphism in avionic UI, there is also a good amount of situation-driven dynamism. Modern GA avionics' fuel estimates are pretty much on the money given a flight plan.
- carlmr 2y ago

lxgr 2y ago

Which incident are you referring to with the altitude confusion example?

aaronmdjones 2y ago
Aeroperu 603.
- beerandt 2y ago
  Not knowing your altimeter is connected to your transponder, and that you provide the altitude along with your squawk to the atc screens is a pretty glaring wtf.
  - coredog64 2y ago
    ATC does have access to radar that locates aircraft via skin paint. TBH, I’d push that back on ATC. If I’m confused about my altitude, it’s not because I suddenly can’t read the numbers on the dial. ATC should understand that the confusion can be resolved by checking with an outside source.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      What do you mean by “skin paint”? Civil primary radar usually isn’t 3D and does indeed depend on transponder, i.e. secondary radar, supplied altitude data. They should know what their radar supports in any case, and get suspicious when an aircraft asks them for a readback of airplane-supported altitude data.
    - aaronmdjones 2y ago
      Primary radar as used by ATC is extremely limited. It is not designed to identify targets at all; nor does it have particularly good vertical resolution. It can tell you where in 2D space a plane is, but without secondary radar and a cooperating transponder, it can't tell you what plane it is, and its uncertainty with respect to altitude can be several thousand feet.
  - 2y ago

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> the operations team apparently doesn't understand how their flight tracker works The operations team didn't have a flight tracker. The Flight Explorer website is a free consumer tool [1]. The actual flight tracking software is native [2]. Malaysia Airlines' flightops was essentially using Google Flights to track their planes. That's the WTF. > actually the computer just uses fixed data that does not take such exceptional situations into account I've never flown a 777. But modern GA flight computers, e.g. G1000, are pretty advanced about projecting fuel consumption. (Of course, this wasn't always the case [2].) [1] https://travel.flightexplorer.com https://travel.flightexplorer.com [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider [2] https://www.flightexplorer.com/products/professional/FE-Professional.pdf https://www.flightexplorer.com/products/professional/FE-Prof...