An Analysis of Human Factor Aspects in Operational Fuel Saving Daniel Vogel 1,2(&) , Ivan Sikora 1 , and Hans-Joachim Ruff-Stahl 2 1 City, University of London, SEMS, Tait Building – C128, Northampton Square London, EC1V 0HB London, UK {Daniel.Vogel.1,Ivan.Sikora.1}@city.ac.uk 2 College of Aeronautics, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Berlin Campus, Kurfuerstenstrasse 56, 10785 Berlin, Germany Ruffha@erau.edu Abstract. Over the last few years, the reduction of operational costs and control of pollutant emissions have become central issues for the commercial aviation industry, and as a result, airlines have been increasingly focusing their attention on operational fuel saving techniques. However, even though the practical implementation and economic potential of these techniques have been exem- plified in a number of papers, little research has been dedicated to a systemic investigation of the effects of operational fuel saving on the human component of the system, i.e., the flight crew of an aircraft. This research examines this area, and investigates the human factors aspects in context with the application of operational fuel saving on the Airbus A 320 series aircraft. The study presents a detailed analysis of the flight crew´s performance and motivational factors related to the topic of interest, which were investigated by means of an online survey and a controlled simulator experiment. Results of the analysis revealed that the application of operational fuel saving imposes a number of latent performance impairments on the flight crew. Motivational factors were shown to be disrupted by the flight crew´s inability to achieve satisfaction from the application of operational fuel saving. The implications of these findings are wide-ranging, as they show, in essence, that the system´s safety and ef ficiency relies solely on the flight crew´s cognitive flexibility and workload compensation capability, while structured analyses and conceptual frameworks in regard to the human factors aspects of operational fuel saving are absent. Keywords: Human factors Á Workload analysis Á Situational awareness analysis Á Error management Á Safety engineering 1 Introduction Driven by unprecedented growth rates and constantly evolving markets, commercial aviation is one of the most competitive business fields worldwide. Characterized by intense market pressure and heavy overcapacities [1, 2], it is especially prone to macro- and microeconomic factors such as new business models, predatory competition or ruinous pricing [1–3]. While these factors are widely cited and broadly acknowledged in the literature, a more in depth look reveals one variable that seems constantly © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 N.A. Stanton (ed.), Advances in Human Aspects of Transportation, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 597, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60441-1_9