Effects of headset, flight workload, hearing ability, and communications message quality on pilot performance.

Objective: This study was designed to determine the effects of hearing loss, aviation headset type, flight workload complexity, and communication signal quality on pilots' performance in an army rotary-wing flight simulator.

Background: To maintain flight status, army aviators who do not meet current audiometric standards require a hearing loss waiver, which is based on speech intelligibility in quiet conditions. Because hearing loss characteristics of hearing-impaired aviators can vary greatly, and because performance is likely also influenced by degree of flight workload and communication demand, it was expected that performance among hearing-impaired aviators would also vary.

In-flight speech intelligibility evaluation of a service member with sensorineural hearing loss: case report.

This case report describes the in-flight speech intelligibility evaluation of an aircraft crewmember with pure tone audiometric thresholds that exceed the U.S. Army's flight standards.