Co-constructing safety: how air traffic controllers change goals from efficiency to safety

Abstract

While relatively rare, air traffic control (ATC) loss of control incidents have the potential to lead to accidents with major loss of life. In such situations, controllers need to rapidly transition from efficiency to safety as the primary goal of the operation. To date, there has been relatively little investigation of how controllers collaboratively manage these goal changes (known as co-construction) in time critical safety compromised events. This paper examines whether co-construction occurs in real-time ATC collaboration and, if it does, identifies the different forms it takes and how efficiently it is conducted. 27 ATC incident occurrence reports from a major air navigation service provider that concerned a loss of separation, runway incursion, or loss of separation assurance were analysed. Each occurrence report was coded for the sequence of actions, plans, and goals, and the point at which co-construction occurred was identified. Co-constructive interactions were then classified as optimal or sub-optimal. A bottom-up thematic analysis identified characteristics of optimal and sub-optimal interactions. The analysis revealed 27 instances of co-construction. These instances of co-construction could be categorized into one of three types: Type 1 (communication about a primary goal change, N = 1), Type 2 (plan changes indexing a new primary goal, N = 13), and Type 3 (actions indexing a new plan and primary goal, N = 13). The data analysis showed that nearly half of the co-constructive interactions were suboptimal in terms of communicative efficiency. The findings suggest that controllers infer goal changes from plans and actions rather than explicitly communicating them. This lack of explicit co-construction is concerning because goal changes (e.g., prioritizing safety over efficiency) often indicate a critical system state. To enhance co-construction, we propose a formal communicative structure. This structure can be used to enhance compromised separation training, supplement occurrence investigations, and enhance future system enhancement initiatives.