Controller-Pilot Radio Channel Utilization and Cognitive Issues

This paper introduces a new metric, termed cognitive utilization, which tries to capture the percentage of time in which a controller has to “think” about certain aircraft. In that sense, cognitive utilization sums all the time intervals during which a specific communication “transaction” is underway. Voice-communication messages for fifteen 30-minute sector samples, and traffic count data are analyzed in order to determine whether cognitive utilization affects sector capacity. First, we investigate the relation between physical radio channel utilization and sector capacity, and then, whether there is an independent cognitive effect.