I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words.
TITLE:
Voice metrics and workload in helicopter rescue: Insights from ninety-six cockpit recordings.
WHAT?
Study investigating whether cockpit communication patterns can provide objective indicators of workload and operational performance during helicopter rescue.
WHERE?
Norwegian Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) during rescue training.
WHEN?
Published online in August 2026 in Safety Science, Volume 205 (2027).
WHY?
Workload is difficult to measure objectively during complex flight operations. The researchers wanted to establish whether routinely recorded cockpit communications could provide an additional, non-invasive means of assessing operational demands and complementing subjective and physiological workload measures.
HOW?
Eleven participants (four pilots, three physicians and four rescuers) completed realistic rescue exercises across mountainous, forested and confined terrain. Each mission was flown twice, once using a hoist and once using an underslung static rope, to compare communication as a measure of workload between hoisting and rope techniques. Researchers analysed 134 cockpit recordings from 96 rescue missions focusing on communication during the most demanding rescuer insertion phase.
They counted verbal commands, aircraft-position corrections and deviations from standard phraseology, comparing these measures with task duration, perceived workload (NASA-TLX), heart rate and heart-rate variability.
FINDINGS:
Communication demands differed significantly. Physicians issued an average of 29 commands during hoisting compared with 47 during rope operations.
Hoisting was quicker with an average insertion time of 107 seconds for hoisting versus 163 seconds for rope operations.
Hoisting required approximately three aircraft-position corrections compared with six during rope operations.
Communication level reflected task workload Longer insertions and more commands or corrections were associated with higher perceived workload by the crew. Physiological measures (heart rate and HR variability) generally supported these relationships, particularly among pilots.
Phraseology deviations were more complex. Pilots displayed more communication deviations during lower-workload operations, suggesting that departures from standard phraseology are not necessarily indicators of increased workload.
SO WHAT?
The study suggests that what crews say, and how frequently they need to say it, can reveal clues about operational demands.
This technique offers potential applications for CRM training, performance assessment and operational debriefing. Analysing cockpit recordings could help identify increased coordination demands, repeated corrections and operational inefficiencies that might otherwise go unnoticed.
However, communication patterns are complex and context-dependent. More commands do not indicate poorer performance – often the opposite – and the study cannot establish whether communication demands increase workload or simply reflect more challenging operations.
Nevertheless, although based on a small sample, the findings highlight the potential of cockpit voice recordings as an accessible source of objective human-factors data.
REFERENCE:
Mattingsdal, H., Søvik, S., & Ottestad, W. (2027). Voice metrics and workload in helicopter rescue: Insights from ninety-six cockpit recordings. Safety Science, 205, Article 107401. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2026.107401
