Research into checklist usage
 

Gents,

As I don't have Athens access, I can't afford to hit-and-miss - so was wondering if someone might point me in the direction of one or two good studies or evidence-based articles regarding which checklist technique (specifically, "read-and-do" vs. "flow-followed-by-challenge-response-checklist") works best under what circumstances.

My intuition tells me that "read-and-do" is disastrous for normal ops, but works very well when we are less familiar with the subject, i.e. non-normals and perhaps supplementary procedures. Can't sell intuition, though - so will need some scientific data to confirm or deny that 6th sense...

In advance thanks for your assistance ;)

Try a search on Flight Safety Foundation - and possibly within that site, NASA studies-checklists etc. I recall a couple of good papers. Points made were:

Short. Simple. Responses to state the switch position or selection e.g. 'auto' 'on' '15 degrees' etc and NOT simply 'set' or 'checked'.

One interesting variation I used and liked had its genesis with British Airways (I think).
Whichever pilot did the check, or flow of checks, then read the checklist, and the OTHER pilot looked at the selections and made the responses. It really forced both to participate fully.

Thanks for that, Mach.

Did find those papers, and they do mention the advantages of challenge-and-response, i.e. redundant checking and thus having 2 chances to spot an error.

FSF paper on error trapping was good as well, but did not go into benefits or draw-backs of read-and-do, although it made some good points on flow execution.

My main problem with read-and-do for normal checklists is when task gets crossed with reading, i.e. when the task is in the area of responsibility of the pilot reading the checklist. Chances of an actual cross-check being performed correctly are low, I feel - just need the data to back it up...

Steady on, mach, or you'll develop logic like that into proposing BA style monitored approaches and then where would we be? Things could get awfully messy around here what with all the flying blood and guts...from the people who haven't tried it.

yeah, not going near that can of worms...

Came across this - problem solved ;-) Flight Cognition Laboratory