Being certain when it really matters: interaction in the airline cockpit

Abstract

For efficiency and safety, airline pilots’ interaction to perform routine flight tasks is organised around standardised roles, procedures, and scripted phrasings, to ensure appropriate order, timing, consistency, precision, and especially certainty: ready for takeoff? any speed restriction? autopilot on? However, pilots must realise these in situ, in real time, relative to emerging circumstances, including in situations of uncertainty, error, or emergency. This research analyses cockpit video recordings from actual flights.

Maurice Nevile is a conversation analyst and began researching interaction in commercial aviation in the late 1990s, riding in the cockpit to video record airline pilots collaborating to perform routine flight tasks. He is author of Beyond the Black Box: Talk-in-interaction in the Airline Cockpit (2004), lead-editor of Interacting with Objects (2014), and co-editor of Multiactivity in Social Interaction (2014), Interaction and Mobility (2013), and a journal special issue for Semiotica (2012) on social interaction in cars. He has also completed research and consultancies for the Australian transport safety authority, including on air accidents, and researched a military friendly fire incident. Maurice is an Adjunct Professor, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia.