The aim of this study was to understand how the prolonged use of cockpit automation is affecting pilots’ manual flying skills.

There is an ongoing concern about a potential deterioration of manual flying skills among pilots who assume a supervisory role while cockpit automation systems carry out tasks that were once performed by human pilots.

We asked 16 airline pilots to fly routine and nonroutine flight scenarios in a Boeing 747-400 simulator while we systematically varied the level of automation that they used, graded their performance, and probed them about what they were thinking about as they flew.

We found pilots’ instrument scanning and manual control skills to be mostly intact, even when pilots reported that they were infrequently practiced. However, when pilots were asked to manually perform the cognitive tasks needed for manual flight (e.g., tracking the aircraft’s position without the use of a map display, deciding which navigational steps come next, recognizing instrument system failures), we observed more frequent and significant problems. Furthermore, performance on these cognitive tasks was associated with measures of how often pilots engaged in task-unrelated thought when cockpit automation was used.

We found that while pilots’ instrument scanning and aircraft control skills are reasonably well retained when automation is used, the retention of cognitive skills needed for manual flying may depend on the degree to which pilots remain actively engaged in supervising the automation.