Thank you for taking part in our research! In our research, we are investigating what aids, and what detracts controllers from looking deeper into a runway incursion incident and reporting all the underlying contributing factors. We created a reporting tool that asks guided questions to identify how and why an incursion occurred. We need your help to test the usefulness and usability of this reporting tool. We appreciate your responses and feedback on our reporting tool. We hope that our study can help the aviation community improve runway incursion incident data collection.

In this experiment, you will report two hypothetical runway incursion incidents using our reporting tool. During this experiment, we will be observing you as you interact with the tool. We do ask you to ‘think-aloud’ as you interact with our tool. We will record the video call, so we don’t lose important information. We will report our analysis in aggregate, and not reveal any identifiable information. We may use direct quotes when we report the results but we will not link any personal identifiers to the quotes.

We will start the experiment by showing you a video of the incursion. Analogous to a real-life incident, you will be able to view this video only once. However, you may request access to the recording of the communication at any point. We also have two volunteers playing the role of the pilot for each aircraft involved in the incursion. At any point, you may talk to the pilots to understand their perspective. The reporting tool also has links to ‘Help’ pages in case you have difficulty understanding a question.

The reporting tool asks you a series of guiding questions, your responses to which will help identify errors and contributing factors that led to the incursion. The general outline of the tool is as follows:

Please note that the reporting tool allows you to go back and forth between pages. The tool also provides a summary report at the end which you can review and modify before the final submission. We anticipate that reporting each incident will take approximately 20 minutes.

After you finish reporting, we would like to ask you some open-ended questions regarding your experience with the tool, and record any other feedback you may have. We anticipate this interview will take about 15 minutes. Your participation in this interview is voluntary.

Thank you again, for your time and cooperation. The next page sets the stage for the incident by laying out the airport, meteorological, and tower conditions on the day of the hypothetical incident. This background information may provide context to identify some of the contributing factors.

Please click on the ‘Report a Runway Incursion Incident’ button to proceed.