The Retention of Manual Flying Skills in the Automated Cockpit
Adults / lifelong learning AI and learning Attention and memory
Links to claims
Limits (1)
| Claim | Basis |
|---|---|
| C18 | 16 airline pilots in a 747 simulator: hand-flying and instrument scanning largely intact after years of automation, but the cognitive navigation tasks the automation normally does broke down (1 of 16 error-free), tied to mind-wandering while monitoring. Cross-sectional, no before/after baseline. Full text read. |
Review state: first-pass draft, pending human review.
Source note
Syntes: Casner et al. (2014) — pilots kept their hand-flying skills under automation, but the thinking parts of manual flight broke down
Källa: Casner, S. M.; Geven, R. W.; Recker, M. P.; Schooler, J. W. (2014). The Retention of Manual Flying Skills in the Automated Cockpit. Human Factors 56(8), 1506–1516. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720814535628
Verified content
- [full text] 16 airline pilots; they had flown 73% of their total flight time in aircraft with a flight management computer (FMC).
- [abstract] Instrument scanning and manual control skills were mostly intact, even when pilots reported they rarely practised them.
- [full text] When the cognitive work of navigation had to be done without the FMC/map, only 1 of 16 pilots completed the arrival, approach and missed approach without an operationally significant error; 4 failed to set the final approach course, 3 descended below the minimum descent altitude, 6 failed to fly the missed-approach heading.
- [full text] Number of errors correlated with the share of task-unrelated thought pilots reported, r(14) = .56, about 30% of the variability; task-unrelated thought was more common with the FMC available than without (20% vs 5%).
Limits
- [full text] Small sample; one simulator study; cross-sectional — no baseline from before automation, so it cannot show a drop caused by automation.
- [assessment] Cockpit automation, not AI decision support; relevant to C18 as the classic automation-era evidence on which skills decay.
Why it is in the library
The classic study usually cited on deskilling under automation. It splits the question C18 asks: motor skills held up, while the cognitive skills the automation performs did not — and only for pilots whose minds wandered while monitoring.
Added 2026-10-18 by the project (weekly source sweep). [abstract] = from the published abstract; [full text] = read in the full text; [assessment] = the project's own assessment.
Metadata as recorded
- ID
- AI-044
- Tier
- observational
- Titel
- The Retention of Manual Flying Skills in the Automated Cockpit
- Författare
- Casner, S. M.; Geven, R. W.; Recker, M. P.; Schooler, J. W.
- År
- 2014 (Human Factors 56(8), 1506–1516)
- Källa/DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720814535628
- URL
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018720814535628 (subscription; authors' lab copy at metalab.psych.ucsb.edu)
- Typ
- 16 airline pilots flew routine and non-routine scenarios in a Boeing 747-400 simulator with the level of automation varied; performance graded; thought probes for task-unrelated thought; no measurement from before the pilots used automation
- Åldersgrupp
- vuxen-livslangt
- Teman
- ai-och-larande;uppmarksamhet-och-minne
- Hämtad
- 2026-10-18
- Paywall
- paywalled (authors' lab copy free)
- Tillagd
- source sweep 2026-10-18 (kind: adjacent); links pending human review
The original files (PDF or abstract) are kept in the project archive and are not published here.