Communication and Human Factors Phenomena in Aviation Transmit Knowledge

Human communication use of silence and voice in flights and the input both provide in knowledge construction especially in unusual or emergency situations are the core of this book. In addition to voice, the book explores silence (personal, operational, institutional, and regulatory) and its impact towards accomplishing awareness for effective flight communication. Aviation interaction is purposeful, since pilots and controllers develop consciousness of where is the one and where is the other and in what status only when they exchange messages and describe their actions. The voice channel between pilot and controller may contain periods of operating in silence, but voice should restart to have a meaningful exchange of information (with no uncertainty) between their physically distant spaces. Empirical data from this book’s aviation informants include a whole range of instances: from verbal phraseology to truncated messages of hesitation, interrupted messages, and dialogic marking of checklists. So, communication constructs even explicit factual knowledge that must be applied (first perceived) by all participants following SOPs. Human factors analysis is focusing more on conditions and evaluations, whereas in cockpit operation environment, the issue seems to be more on how pilot, crew, and ATC expertise are to be exercised and thus implemented in a dynamic decision-making process. Furthermore, it covers tacit knowledge that is not codified but in participant’s brains sometimes intuitive, sometimes judgmental, and context-sensitive. In any case, the only way to articulate the application of both knowledge types is by recruiting aviation informants, here anonymized using airport names as aliases explained in this chapter.