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Objective: This study investigates how stress affects airline pilots’ performance and explores the potential of psychophysiological monitoring tools to assess and mitigate related risk. Background: Modern commercial aviation is a hypercomplex socio-technical system in which safety margins are narrow and operational demands constantly evolve. While technological advancements have enhanced efficiency, they have simultaneously increased pilots’ cognitive load by requiring the rapid integration of vast amounts of information. Stress, intensified by the complexities of the operational environment, undermines pilots’ cognitive performance and constitutes a critical risk to the safety and efficiency of airline operations. Methods: A structured and reasoned literature review was conducted using a snowballing technique to identify empirical and theoretical studies on psychophysiological indicators of stress and cognitive load in aviation. Results: The review synthesises a range of biometric measures applied over time to capture pilots’ cognitive and emotional states. These approaches demonstrate the feasibility of monitoring airline pilots’ stress status in real time and highlight persistent challenges related to intrusiveness, ecological validity, and operational integration. Conclusions: In an increasingly automated and data-intensive aviation environment, distress-related cognitive impairment constitutes a critical operational impediment for safety and efficiency. Addressing this challenge requires human-centred monitoring systems capable of detecting early physiological distress markers to enable adaptive interventions. Biomarker-based multimodal methods show promise, but their effectiveness relies on trustworthy data integration and accurate contextual interpretation. Emerging approaches, such as Deep Metabolic-processes Assessment (DMA®), may advance non-invasive detection of stress-induced metabolic changes. Recognising pilots as central agents of system resilience underscores the need to integrate cognitive state monitoring into future aviation system design to enhance safety and efficiency.

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Monitoring Stress in Airline Pilots: Biomarker-Based Approaches to Operational Safety and Efficiency

  • 会议论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年

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  • Giacomo Belloni,
  • Francesca Antonella Aiello,
  • Petru Lucian Curșeu

摘要

Objective: This study investigates how stress affects airline pilots’ performance and explores the potential of psychophysiological monitoring tools to assess and mitigate related risk. Background: Modern commercial aviation is a hypercomplex socio-technical system in which safety margins are narrow and operational demands constantly evolve. While technological advancements have enhanced efficiency, they have simultaneously increased pilots’ cognitive load by requiring the rapid integration of vast amounts of information. Stress, intensified by the complexities of the operational environment, undermines pilots’ cognitive performance and constitutes a critical risk to the safety and efficiency of airline operations. Methods: A structured and reasoned literature review was conducted using a snowballing technique to identify empirical and theoretical studies on psychophysiological indicators of stress and cognitive load in aviation. Results: The review synthesises a range of biometric measures applied over time to capture pilots’ cognitive and emotional states. These approaches demonstrate the feasibility of monitoring airline pilots’ stress status in real time and highlight persistent challenges related to intrusiveness, ecological validity, and operational integration. Conclusions: In an increasingly automated and data-intensive aviation environment, distress-related cognitive impairment constitutes a critical operational impediment for safety and efficiency. Addressing this challenge requires human-centred monitoring systems capable of detecting early physiological distress markers to enable adaptive interventions. Biomarker-based multimodal methods show promise, but their effectiveness relies on trustworthy data integration and accurate contextual interpretation. Emerging approaches, such as Deep Metabolic-processes Assessment (DMA®), may advance non-invasive detection of stress-induced metabolic changes. Recognising pilots as central agents of system resilience underscores the need to integrate cognitive state monitoring into future aviation system design to enhance safety and efficiency.