A B S T R A C TThe increasing prevalence of technology in modern airliners brings not just advantages, but also the potential for cyber threats. Fortunately, there have been no significant attacks on civil aircraft to date, which allows the handling of these emerging threats to be approached proactively. Although an ample body of research into technical defense strategies exists, current research neglects to take the human operator into account. In this study, we present an exploratory experiment focusing on pilots confronted with a cyber-attack. Results show that the occurrence of an attack affects all dependent variables: pilots' workload, trust, eye-movements, and behavior. Pilots experiencing an attack report heavier workload and weakened trust in the system than pilots whose aircraft is not under attack. Further, pilots who experienced an attack monitored basic flying instruments less and their performance deteriorated. A warning about a potential attack seems to moderate several of those effects. Our analysis prompts us to recommend incorporating cyber-awareness into pilots' recurrent training; we also argue that one has to consider all affected personnel when designing such training. Future research should target the development of appropriate procedures and training techniques to prepare pilots to correctly identify and respond to cyber-attacks.

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Objective. The aim of this study is to analyze influences on inter-rater reliability and within-group agreement within a highly experienced rater group when assessing pilots' non-technical skills.Background. Non-technical skills of pilots are crucial for the conduct of safe flight operations. To train and assess these skills, reliable expert ratings are required.Literature shows to some degree that inter-rater reliability is influenced by factors related to the targets, scenarios, rating tools, or to the raters themselves.Method. Thirty-seven type-rating examiners from a European airline assessed the performance of four flight crews based on video recordings using LOSA and adapted NOTECHS tools. We calculated r wg and ICC(3) to measure within-group agreement and inter-rater reliability.Results. The findings indicated that within-group agreement and inter-rater reliability were not always acceptable. Both metrics showed that outstanding pilots' performance was rated with higher within-group agreement. For cognitive aspects of performance, inter-rater reliability was higher than for social aspects of performance.Agreement was lower on the pass/fail level than for the distinguished performance scales. Conclusion.These results suggest to back pass/fail decisions not exclusively on nontechnical skill ratings. We furthermore recommend that regulatory authorities more systematically address inter-rater reliability in airline instructor training. Airlines as well as training facilities should be encouraged to demonstrate sufficient inter-rater reliability when using their rating tools.