An investigation into communication theories as it applies to air traffic control

• Main Author: Ong, Jason Jia Sheng
• Other Authors: Lee Siang Guan, Stephen
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/67401
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Air traffic volume has been growing exponentially ever since the massive improvement to the jet engines in the 1970s. To keep up with the growth, air traffic control has to look towards a more efficient way of communication. The objective of this project is to understand the principles of human-to-human communications and how these may be employed to make air traffic control more effective. The seven traditions of human communication were studied and from there, the Rhetoric Tradition emerged as the most suitable tradition to analyse ATC communication. This Tradition was then tested against three different types of ATC communication namely, voice protocols from the CAAS handbook, and two flightlogs. A framework based on the Rhetoric Tradition was also created as a guide for the analysis of ATC communications. As visual computing and communications advance by leaps and bounds, 2D and 3D ATC displays were compared for their relative merits and limitations.