Cognitive Strategies in Emergency and Abnormal Situations Training: Implications for Resilience in Air Traffic Control

The management of emergencies and abnormal situations in the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system entails substantial challenges for the air traffic controllers. The inherent complexity and dynamics of the ATC system can give rise to numerous cases of failure and controllers have to develop failure-sensitive strategies to counteract and forestall any paths to failure. Failure-sensitive strategies in the form of individual and joint cognitive strategies may be considered as an important resource of resilience in the ATC system. By hypothesizing that these failure sensitive strategies are observable during the training in handling abnormal situations, a field study was performed to elicit and document in a reliable manner the controllers’ individual and joint cognitive strategies. This paper summarizes initial findings with the potential of providing insights in cultivating sources of resilience in the ATC system.