Research on the influence of bad working state on air traffic control effect based on multi-independent sample Kruskal-Wallis test

Abstract

This study examines the influence of bad working states on the control effect of air traffic controllers by establishing a scoring standard for control performance assessment with eight assessment items, such as the standard radiotelephony communications, and 25 specific assessment contents, such as the completeness of control instructions. Combined with equipment for tower control simulations, this standard assesses and counts the scores of controllers in different states, namely, sober, fatigue, stress, and fatigue & stress. We tested the control effect distributions of four states through the Kruskal-Wallis test and analyzed whether the bad working states were statistically significant for each control effect item. The study found that the bad working states are statistically significant for standard radiotelephony communications, flight progress strips, safety separation, instruction timing, situational awareness, and total control effect score in the control effects. Moreover, the research revealed that bad working states are not statistically significant for equipment inspection, external environment scan, and safety awareness in the control effect. Further, forced pair comparisons of the substantial control effect items showed that controllers have adverse statistically significant effects on the use of flight progress strips, situational awareness, and the total score of control effects when controllers are in a stress state. Meanwhile, they have an adverse statistically significant effect on the standard radiotelephony communications, safety separation and instruction timing, flight progress strips, situational awareness, and the total score of control effects when controllers are under a fatigue & stress state.