Quantifying the effects of time pressure on pilot situation awareness error in aviation emergencies

In aviation emergencies, pilots must maintain a high level of situation awareness (SA) under strict time constraints. Existing methods for SA assessment primarily consider time pressure through performance shaping factors or theoretical assumptions, leaving gaps in empirical quantification. To address this limitation, this study aims to quantify two effects induced by time pressure on SA: the information filtration effect and the decision acceleration effect. A typical emergency scenario involving an engine fire during takeoff has been selected where the pilot must maintain the correct takeoff altitude and rapidly establish SA of the fire condition. This study designed a flight simulation experiment integrating aircraft control and abnormality diagnosis tasks based on this emergency scenario, with time pressure manipulated at three levels (high, medium, low) as the independent variable. Participants’ eye movements, subjective pressure scores, and decision belief levels were recorded as dependent measures. Based on the subjective and objective data, these two effects of time pressure were statistically modeled and validated through simulation. The relative error between experimental results and simulation results was below 5%. The findings contribute significantly to the development of SA assessment methods and cognitive models in time-critical aviation emergencies.