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Little is known about air traffic controllers' preferred maneuvers to resolve conflicts between pairs of aircraft, despite the topic's importance of to the planned NextGen system. We analyzed 256 cases of conflict resolution maneuvering from radar track data from 5 U.S. air traffic control centers. Our results show the influences of conflict geometries on controllers' maneuver choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transfer of position responsibility between controllers is accomplished with a position relief briefing (PRB) conducted using standards and a checklist developed by the Federal Aviation Administration. In this study, expert judges indicated the items on the checklist that were referenced in briefings from 5 terminal radar approach controls. Briefings were short and routinely included information on only a subset of checklist items, often only traffic, and often in an order not consistent with the checklist. We explored different models to explain the PRB structure and the partial, unordered use of the checklist. We propose a working model of air traffic control shift change that assumes that controllers convey information from memory and only sometimes use the physical checklist to conduct the briefing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]