The aviation industry is under increasing pressure to reduce cost and manage the increased number of passengers. One area under pressure is the Air Traffic Control. The Air Traffic Control will in a foreseeable future manage the introduction of drones also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles by integrating them into civil airspace with manned aircraft. Drones are lacking consensus from authorities with regards to standards due to their rapid expansion. Given their size, shape and speed, they can also pose threats to manned aircrafts and there is a need to address them in an Air Traffic Management system interoperating with manned aircrafts. The purpose in this study is to identify what considerations to make when automating complex system elements with respect to safety. Safety involves all the different stakeholders in the air transportation system, which is a Safety critical System. Furthermore, the aim is also to identify areas in which European Operational Concept Validation Methodology (E-OCVM) can be complemented with. Standard E-OCVM is missing specific assessment criteria with regards to safety and how it can interact with other standards. The approach is thereby to use various standards with focus on Systems Engineering to complement E-OCVM since it is lacking with regards to how it is used to validate Air Traffic Control systems. To capture the complexity of automating elements of an industry involving many stakeholders, a qualitative analysis was conducted in this project, using a System Engineering approach with four standards A-SLP, A-RLP, A-DAS and A-SAS. A-SLP and A-RLP are two general standards while A-DAS and A-SAS are focusing on the contexts of aircrafts and software development. Empirical data was gathered by semi-structured interviews of seven experts within the relevant areas in the field. From the review of the four standards, it was found that they can for instance complement E-OCVM in how software errors can lead to a failure condition among other ways. The main identified considerations faced with an integration of drones into civil airspace, is to manage the human interaction with the introduced Air Traffic Management systems. More specifically, the human element must be involved from the training phase in the development of systems in a Safety Critical System to minimize risk. Furthermore, redundancies that are built into the system has to, not only be able to put the system into a safe state, but also be carefully analyzed in how they interact with other systems to avoid misjudgement for the Air Traffic Controllers. Lastly, to obtain specific details on how interoperability could occur using standards, the standards used in this study refer to usage of other documents and standards. Standards specifically tailored for the operational context of drones would facilitate further testing and implementation of their integration into civil airspace. Given that different standards were used to complement the EOCVM standard, a set of unified standards are required that are proportional with the type of drones, the type of operations and in the environment that they are operating in. This will be needed to fulfill the European vision of safe integration of drones and needs thereby to be carried out in a global manner, thus also share experience with other actors to advance the new technology adaptation.

In this essay one has been investigating some of the reasons why aviation incidents take place and also examine what strategies there are to minimize the risks - primarily regarding miscommunication which often seems to be a contributing element or a direct cause in aviation mishaps. The aim of this study is to highlight and raise awareness about this field of study from a communicative point of view.The study has been performed using qualitative interviews with pilots, Air Traffic Controllers and other professionals within the aviation industry. The research has been somewhat hampered by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic but not to an extent that would have corrupted the findings.The key results have indicated that miscommunication still is a problem in the aviation industry, but less so on the local national stage than in a global perspective. Two particular occurrences that have been given extra attention are runway incursions and the use of Controller Pilot Data-Link Communications.One has established that there are technical systems available on the market to improve communication performance and that runway incursion is a problem that grows with the complexity of the airport environment. One has also been made aware of the fact that human factors can only be mitigated so far with technology. The principal question has been: How can Miscommunication in Aviation be reduced? / I denna uppsats har vi tittat på några av de bakomliggande orsakerna till att incidenter fortfarande sker inom trafikflyget samt undersökt vilka strategier som föreligger för att minimera dessa risker - primärt pga felkommunikation vilken ofta tenderar att vara en bakomliggande eller direkt utlösande faktor i flygolyckor. Syftet med denna studie är att uppmärksamma och öka medvetenheten om dessa fenomen från en kommunikativ synvinkel.Studien har genomförts medelst en kvalitativ intervjumetod med piloter, flygledare och andra initierade yrkesgrupper inom flygindustrin. Forskningen har hämmats något pga utbrottet av COVID-19 pandemin men inte i en sådan omfattning att resultatet har förvanskats.De huvudsakliga resultaten har indikerat att felkommunikation fortfarande är ett problem inom flygbranschen, men i en långt mindre omfattning på lokal nationell nivå än i ett globalt perspektiv. Två specifika företeelser som har getts extra uppmärksamhet är rullbaneintrång samt användandet av CPDLC (datalänk).Vi har konstaterat att det finns tekniska system på marknaden för att förbättra prestandan på kommunikationen samt att rullbaneintrång är ett problem som växer med flygplatsens storlek och komplexitetsgrad. Vi har också uppmärksammats på att den mänskliga faktorn endast delvis kan undanröjas med hjälp av teknologi. Den huvudsakliga fågeställningen har varit: Hur kan felkommunikation inom flyget reduceras

The Multiple Remote Tower Center concept (mRTC) is a cutting edge project which allows one air traffic control officer (ATCO) to be in charge of multiple remotely situated airports simultaneously. When implemented, it will revolutionise how air traffic is managed at smaller airports and allow for increased efficiency and decreased operational costs. Consequently, at the time of writing a lot of effort is going into evaluating this new way of air traffic management from a safety perspective. Air traffic management has been defined as an issue maintaining situational awareness and exercising control. This thesis aims to investigate how the phenomenon target fascination affects the ATCOs ability to exercise control over its controlled airspace and maintain its situation awareness. It does so by creating a baseline scenario of work in a mRTC, and then comparing the ATCOs performance in the baseline scenario with its performance in the same corresponding scenario, but with elements of target fascination introduced. The differences in the scenarios are analysed using the Contextual Control Model, the Extended Control Model and a holistic framework for studying situation awareness. The analysis shows that target fascination does affect the ATCOs ability to maintain control, but not radically so, and only for a short period of time. The target fascination forces the ATCO to rely on information in the immediate environment to a higher degree than during regular work, as opposed to making decisions based on a holistic understanding of the situation and high level goals. However, once the understanding of the situation have been re-established, the level of control quickly returns to normal levels. Situation awareness is thus a key concept in maintaining control. The situation awareness analysis show that target fascination affects situation awareness by causing the ATCOs understanding of the situation to become outdated without the ATCOs knowledge. Because of this, there may be developments in the situation that the ATCO is not aware of, which hinders it from acting as it normally would. In some cases an intervention from an external actor or element may be necessary to break the fascination and re-establish the ATCOs understanding for the situation. As soon as the fascination is broken, the ATCO quickly takes steps to re-establish its situation awareness and return to normal operations.

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