Gesture
in the airline cockpit:
allocating
control of the power levers during takeoff
Maurice Nevile
Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
School of Language Studies
Faculty of Arts
Australian National University
Canberra
Abstract
This paper explores the role of gesture in the routine work of airline pilots.
The airline cockpit is an information rich environment (Hutchins 1995), with
an almost bewildering array of displays, buttons, switches, lights and levers.
This paper uses video data of airline pilots at work during a regular passenger
flight, along with detailed transcriptions of the pilots’ talk and non-talk
activities. The paper draws on insights and practices of ethnomethodology
and conversation analysis to examine gesture and processes of talk-in-interaction
as the pilots collaborate together to accomplish a routine but critical action
for a takeoff: allocating ‘control’ of the engine power (thrust)
levers. To have control of the power levers is to have the responsibility,
indeed the right, to touch them and to move them to alter engine power. The
paper explores how pilots develop and demonstrate to one another their situated
and moment-to-moment understandings of which pilot has control of the power
levers, and exactly when they have this control. The pilots are shown to coordinate
with precision a range of available resources, including talk, visual monitoring
of displays, and physical contact with the levers. Such coordination is one
way that pilots both orient to and enact relevant cockpit roles as Captain
or First Officer, and as Pilot-flying or Pilot-not-flying.
Introduction
This is a summary of the paper. The paper examines the place and role of gesture
as pilots coordinate their talk and non-talk activities to perform a routine
task necessary to fly their plane. In the airline cockpit, non-talk activities
include pressing buttons, moving levers, turning knobs, keying information
into a computer, looking at a display, or producing and handling written materials.
The paper presents evidence that one way in which pilots develop and demonstrate
to one another, moment-to-moment, their shared understandings, is by precisely
coordinating gesture and talk. The research reported here is part of a wider
interest in studying gesture and processes of talk-in-interaction in teams
in sociotechnical workplace settings, where people interact to perform tasks,
assess situations, make decisions, and identify and respond to moments of
doubt and error, among other things, as they work together to accomplish their
work goals. These studies have shown how, in context and moment-to-moment,
people draw on a range of resources, only one of which is talk, as they develop,
demonstrate to one another, and act on relevant understandings for the work
they are doing. The studies have shown the importance of participants’
non-talk activities (eg. gestures, body movements and orientation) and other
features and events of the material setting as contributors to the unfolding
interaction. The studies have shown the value of transcribing and analysing
more than words alone for exploring how people interpret what they are doing
and what is going on around them. Critically, the studies have helped to develop
our awareness of human cognition, of how people come to know things and act
on that knowing, as situated, embodied, and socially shared.
Talk-in-interaction in the airline cockpit
There is a particular significance for studying talk-in-interaction in the
airline cockpit. From the evidence of ‘black box’ cockpit voice
recorders the commercial aviation industry has come to recognise that human
performance is a contributing factor in around two thirds of all airline accidents.
Usually the issue is not so much one of pilots’ individual competence,
that is, their technical knowledge or ability to control their plane, but
how the pilots communicate and act as a crew in specific circumstances. On
a more positive note, when pilots work well as a team they can react well
and make the most of dire situations. The commercial aviation industry recognises
that the value of working as a team has increased in the information rich
environment of the highly computerised and automated modern airliner, when
'flying' becomes a matter of monitoring and managing the technology of the
various aircraft systems. It is typical now for pilots to receive training
in ‘crew (or cockpit) resource management’ (CRM) to improve their
communication and performance as members of a team.
The data
The paper analyses in micro-detail a data segment that was collected as part
of a larger study of routine talk-in-interaction in the airline cockpit (Nevile
2001, 2002, in press). For this study I flew on regular passenger airline
flights with two Australian airlines and sat in the cockpit observer seat
to film the pilots at work. The observer seat, or ‘jumpseat’, is
positioned between and immediately behind the seats of the pilots. The data
segment looks at the pilots’ conduct of actions associated with the takeoff,
and in particular the allocation of control of the power levers and ‘rotating’
the plane to lift off the ground. The segment begins just before the ‘takeoff
roll’, that is the aircraft’s acceleration down the runway. The
segment concludes as the aircraft becomes airborne and climbs away from the
runway. The full version of this paper has transcriptions which include details
of non-talk activities.
Data segment
The segment is transcribed using notation developed in conversation analysis
(notation is given at end of paper).
1 (14.0)
2 C/PNF:
it’s gone from right to left again.
3 (1.0)
4 C/PNF:
you can’t win Chris can you.
5 FO/PF:
no.
6 (0.5)
7 C/PNF:
your power levers.
8
(1.0)
9 FO/PF:
okay.
10 (12.8)
((sound of engines increasing in power))
11 FO/PF: max power.
12 (3.7)
13 C/PNF (êthat’sê)
checked.
14 (1.2)
15 C/PNF: sixty knots,
(.) power’s normal your steering.
16 FO/PF: my steering.
17 (11.1)
18 C/PNF: rotate,
19
(5.5)
To perform the takeoff and initial climb the pilots perform a number of actions,
in strict sequence. The actions, and associated talk, are as follows:
i) Advance the power levers to increase the engine power (lines 6-10)
ii) Monitor and confirm as appropriate the engine power achieved (lines 11-13)
iii) Monitor the plane’s speed, monitor the engine power, confirm responsibility
for steering the plane (lines 14-16)
iv) Raise the nosewheel of the plane (‘rotate’ the plane on its
central landing gear) to become airborne (lines 17-18)
In this segment the talk consists mostly of prescribed callouts and responses.
That is, the pilots are saying what they are required to say according to
their airline’s formal operating procedures for the aircraft, and company
policy. My interest is in the two points where the formal operating procedures
dictate that ‘control’ of the power levers must be transferred from
one pilot to another. In the first instance (lines 7-10), the C/PNF (Captain
and Pilot-not-flying) hands over control to the FO/PF (First Officer and Pilot-flying),
and in the second (lines 11-12) the FO/PF hands control of the levers back
to the C/PNF.
The power levers, one for each of the two engines, are positioned side by
side at roughly lap height in between the pilots on the central console. The
power levers increase or decrease the power of the engines. Pushing the levers
forward together (advancing them) increases the power of the two engines.
Changes to engine power have critical impacts on the performance of the plane,
indeed its ability to become and remain airborne. The pilot in ‘control’
of the levers has responsibility for moving them as appropriate for the stage
of flight and is the only pilot with a ‘right’ to touch them. The
allocation of control of the levers is specified by the operations manual,
but must be accomplished in situ through processes of talk-in-interaction
between the two pilots.
I will give here just a part of the discussion of how the transfer of control
of the power levers occurs. The segment of data begins the C/PNF’s right
hand is on the levers. After beginning his turn at talk (line 7), during ‘power’,
the C/PNF removes his hand from the levers. However, rather than move his
hand away and back to his leg, he lifts his hand up and slows its movement
so that it occupies the space immediately above the levers throughout his
saying of ‘levers’. By raising his hand from the levers the C/PNF
presents the levers as no longer under his immediate control and now physically,
and visibly, potentially available to the FO/PF. At the very moment he completes
his turn at talk, that is immediately upon saying ‘levers.’, the
C/PNF moves his hand to the left away from the levers and towards his own
body. The C/PNF’s precisely timed coordination of talk and hand movement
means that his hand is in contact with the levers, or occupying their surrounding
space, until the moment he completes the very talk that signals his ceding
of their control. By continuing to occupy the space of the levers as he is
talking, by slowing his hand’s movement immediately above them, the C/PNF
postpones the actual transfer of control. The transfer occurs only after his
hand actually moves away from the ‘controlling space’ of the levers.
Only then, as his talk is completed, do they truly become ‘your power
levers.’ (ie. the FO/PF’s). The C/PNF’s talk and hand movement
are in harmony: the powers levers become available to the FO/PF no sooner
and no later than the completion of the talk which announces their availability.
Concluding comments
The paper concludes that a precise coordination of various available resources,
including talk and gesture, allows pilots to recognise certain talk and non-talk
activities as relevant and timely contributions to the performance of a task.
An orientation to a precise coordination of talk and non-talk activity may
be a constituent feature of the work of airline pilots, and others who work
as members of teams to perform tasks in sociotechnical settings, where it
is critically important who performs what action, and when they do so. An
orientation to precisely coordinating talk and non-talk activity is part of
what it is to be, recognisably, an airline pilot.
Transcription Notation
*that* talk
which is quieter than surrounding talk
five. falling
intonation
five, flat
or slightly rising intonation - talk which sounds incomplete
(3.4), (0.3) silence
measured in seconds and tenths of seconds
(.)
silence of less than
a fifth of a second ie. less than (0.2)
(... ) transcriber
doubt about word
((alt. alert buzzer)) description of contextual feature eg. sounds
other than talk
References
Hutchins, E. (1995) How a cockpit remembers its speeds. Cognitive Science,
19:265-288.
Nevile, M. (2001) Understanding who’s who in the airline cockpit: pilots’
pronominal choices and cockpit roles. In A. McHoul and M. Rapley (eds), How
to analyse talk in institutional settings: a casebook of methods. London and
New York: Continuum. Pp:57-71.
Nevile, M. (2002) Coordinating talk and non-talk activity in the airline cockpit.
Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 25,1:131-146.
Nevile, M. (in press) Beyond the black box: talk-in-interaction in the airline
cockpit. In series Directions in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis,
series editors D.Francis and S. Hester. Ashgate: Aldershot.