Who is flying this plane anyway? What mishaps tell us about crew member role assignment and air crew situation awareness

This paper reports a detailed analysis of over 300 civilian incident report s that identified whether loss of situation awareness (SA) was related to a ir crew role assignment. The results indicate (a) that loss of SA is respon sible for an incident more often when the captain is at the controls than w hen the first officer (FO) is at the controls, and (b) that the pilot flyin g (PF) is more likely to lose situation awareness than the pilot not flying (PNF). As a result, captains lose SA more often across aircraft types, fli ght segments, and weather conditions when they are the PF than when they ar e the PNF The results also suggest that the person who is flying commits mo re of the critical errors that lead to an incident. Together, the results i ndicate that captains lose SA more often and make more tactical errors when they are at the controls than when they are not. Applications of this rese arch include aircrew training, procedure development, and accident/incident analysis.