The increasing importance of the airplane in present day civilization Throughout the ages, after each development in speed of communications and transportation, man has made noteworthy changes in his way of living. Indications are that the gradual development of the airplane to a safe and rapid means of transportation has had a great effect upon society by pushing back the frontiers of the world both geographically and scientifically. The impact of this speed has influenced almost every home and certainly every school in America.

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The aim of this thesis is to evaluate fatigue management systems (FMSs) within the Australian transportation industry, and provide directions for future improvement. In doing so, it draws on some preliminary data from the rail industry, and a larger study that evaluates several components of a FMS that was implemented by the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) for the general aviation sector in 2000.

Structural change in organisations is stressful for staff and the managers who must implement it. Most change programs use employee communication techniques to support change directions set by senior executive decision makers-dominant coalitions. This research used a single case study to explain the context and management discourses of a major re-structure of an Australian Federal Government agency, the former Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), during the early 1990s. A content analysis examined the use of keywords in management discourses that argued the need for change. The keywords represented the two major change discourses: micro-economic reform and aviation safety regulation. A critical discourse analysis investigated the dominant coalition's discourse strategies to justify change. Content and process communication theories, and the role of framing in organisational change, were used to explain how employees may have reacted to change directions. The research found that change directions were framed as an economic imperative that clashed with a traditional organisational culture that emphasised the primacy of aviation safety. It found that mixed messages by the two principal members of the dominant coalition who drove change exacerbated the clash. The results suggest a need for further analysis of management discourses used to inform employees about structural change, especially in organisations that have legislative responsibilities. Further analysis of change messages framed by dominant coalitions could lead to a deeper understanding ofhow they affect employees and the change process.

Increasingly the body of research shows that tourism is vulnerable to climate change. Tourism is also a non-negligible contributor to climate change, primarily through rapidly increasing air travel. Recently, a number of tourism destinations that are dependent on long-haul tourism have expressed concerns about the impact of climate policy (both implemented and proposed) on tourist mobility and arrivals to their countries. This thesis examines outcomes from a model which projects how climate mitigation policy could influence arrival numbers to the Caribbean region; an area projected to be disproportionately impacted by climate change. While impacts on this region are likely to be both physical as well as economical, mitigation policy restricting emissions from international aviation is likely to be the first wave of climate change effects felt. This policy, coupled with the fluctuation of global oil prices, may be a significant deterrent for travelers to the Caribbean. Different scenarios using likely mitigation policy costs on international flights and oil price fluctuations were modeled to understand how these tourism-dependent nations might fair with increases in travel cost due to conditions beyond their control. Both region-wide and destination specific results were examined showing that visitor numbers could decrease versus a business as usual scenario with climate policy and heightened oil prices, but not significantly until climate policy with deeper emission cuts and carbon prices higher than currently suggested are put in place. Result are not uniform across the region, and show that certain destinations are projected to be more vulnerable to climate mitigation policy than others. Recommendations focusing on both the aviation industry’s inclusion in climate policy and those to aid the region’s tourism sector are provided.

One of the most significant developments in cockpit technology over the past several years is the emergence of a new cockpit architecture that uses cursor control devices and keyboards for interaction with individual and shared displays. This architecture has allowed for the design of cockpit interfaces with many advantages compared to traditional designs. However, there are a number of challenges associated with these new cockpits that should be addressed so that pilots will be able to take full advantage of the performance improvements available from the new designs. This thesis describes three of the major challenges associated with the new architecture: supporting awareness, assisting interruption recovery, and mitigating interaction conflicts. It also describes the analysis process used to identify these challenges and proposes an interface augmentation with the potential to address them. The proposed design uses visualizations of the history of operator interactions with the interface to provide cues to the pilots about where each of them has been (and is currently) interacting. This interaction data includes both visual (sourced from a gaze tracking system) and input (from the keyboard or cursor control device) information, and was communicated on the interface using dynamic borders around the relevant areas of the interface. This augmentation aimed to address the three identified challenges by providing pilots with: improved awareness of each other’s actions, visual cues of where they were working prior to an interruption and what has changed since, and clear indications of where each is working to allow them to avoid conflicts. A two-stage evaluation process was used to determine the utility of the interface concept in a cockpit context by developing a non-interactive video prototype and showing it to pilots. The results of the evaluation indicated that the design has sufficient potential to warrant further study, as evaluation in higher fidelity environments would help provide further evidence of its potential utility for live cockpit operations. Therefore, future work should include the development and evaluation of a fully interactive prototype for live cockpit operations, as well as further examination of the design concept’s potential for use as a training tool.

Increasingly the body of research shows that tourism is vulnerable to climate change. Tourism is also a non-negligible contributor to climate change, primarily through rapidly increasing air travel. Recently, a number of tourism destinations that are dependent on long-haul tourism have expressed concerns about the impact of climate policy (both implemented and proposed) on tourist mobility and arrivals to their countries. This thesis examines outcomes from a model which projects how climate mitigation policy could influence arrival numbers to the Caribbean region; an area projected to be disproportionately impacted by climate change. While impacts on this region are likely to be both physical as well as economical, mitigation policy restricting emissions from international aviation is likely to be the first wave of climate change effects felt. This policy, coupled with the fluctuation of global oil prices, may be a significant deterrent for travelers to the Caribbean. Different scenarios using likely mitigation policy costs on international flights and oil price fluctuations were modeled to understand how these tourism-dependent nations might fair with increases in travel cost due to conditions beyond their control. Both region-wide and destination specific results were examined showing that visitor numbers could decrease versus a business as usual scenario with climate policy and heightened oil prices, but not significantly until climate policy with deeper emission cuts and carbon prices higher than currently suggested are put in place. Result are not uniform across the region, and show that certain destinations are projected to be more vulnerable to climate mitigation policy than others. Recommendations focusing on both the aviation industry’s inclusion in climate policy and those to aid the region’s tourism sector are provided.

One of the most significant developments in cockpit technology over the past several years is the emergence of a new cockpit architecture that uses cursor control devices and keyboards for interaction with individual and shared displays. This architecture has allowed for the design of cockpit interfaces with many advantages compared to traditional designs. However, there are a number of challenges associated with these new cockpits that should be addressed so that pilots will be able to take full advantage of the performance improvements available from the new designs. This thesis describes three of the major challenges associated with the new architecture: supporting awareness, assisting interruption recovery, and mitigating interaction conflicts. It also describes the analysis process used to identify these challenges and proposes an interface augmentation with the potential to address them. The proposed design uses visualizations of the history of operator interactions with the interface to provide cues to the pilots about where each of them has been (and is currently) interacting. This interaction data includes both visual (sourced from a gaze tracking system) and input (from the keyboard or cursor control device) information, and was communicated on the interface using dynamic borders around the relevant areas of the interface. This augmentation aimed to address the three identified challenges by providing pilots with: improved awareness of each other’s actions, visual cues of where they were working prior to an interruption and what has changed since, and clear indications of where each is working to allow them to avoid conflicts. A two-stage evaluation process was used to determine the utility of the interface concept in a cockpit context by developing a non-interactive video prototype and showing it to pilots. The results of the evaluation indicated that the design has sufficient potential to warrant further study, as evaluation in higher fidelity environments would help provide further evidence of its potential utility for live cockpit operations. Therefore, future work should include the development and evaluation of a fully interactive prototype for live cockpit operations, as well as further examination of the design concept’s potential for use as a training tool.

The aviation industry has more than a hundred years in history in the United States. And the industry has always been one of the important projects to conduct of the country. The industry involves not only technology, capitals but also politics. In order to maintain the influential power to the world, countries, especially the United States and Western Europe invest huge amount in this industry. However, under the globalization and high oil prices era, the industry encounters some difficulties to change. Outsourcing has become the solution for those manufacturers. The high growth of economic in Asia becomes another battle field for western countries to fight, especially in China. Chinese power is getting stronger; however, western countries concern about the special political backgrounds in China. Nevertheless, conducting business and finding cheap labor resource have been multinational companies¡¦ priority these days. The influential power of multinational companies and those parent countries become the major decision maker in the game. The Boeing Company has all the characteristics of these controversial issues. Chinese government, the Boeing Company, the rival Airbus and the U.S. government in the game would affect the industry.

Thesis (M.S. in Human Systems Integration)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2009. / Thesis Advisor(s): O'Connor, Paul E. Second Reader: Miller, Nita Lewis. "December 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 27, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Naval Aviation, safety, mishap, human systems integration, human factors. Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-138). Also available in print.