Human Factors in Simple and Complex Systems, 3rd Edition

13	Response Selection and Principles of Compatibility

It’s the le.... It’s the right one

David McClelland

copilot of a British Midland flight thatcrashed in January, 1989, before the crew turned off the wrong engine.

INTRODUCTION

Human–machine interaction requires that the operator perceives information, cognitively processes that information, and ultimately selects and executes an action. Even if perception and cognition are accomplished flawlessly, an operator may still take an inappropriate or inaccurate action. The quotation with which this chapter begins illustrates an occasion on which a flight crew turned off the wrong engine, resulting in the crash of a commercial aircraft. This kind of error is called a response-selection error ...