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Some aspects of Human Factors have long been a neglected area in rotorcraft design. This is true of such areas not directly influenced by motion and workload studies: the areas of human factors missing from the domain of human factors are those not included in the engineering set, but in the psychological and physiological set. Rotorcraft human factors issues are many of the same developed or determined for the aircraft/airplane category and can be divided into groups such as the man, machine, environment. Included are the issues of operating criteria (environment) of the rotorcraft and its pilots, design criteria to aid that pilot to alleviate stress and enable a functional cockpit (machine), and the issues of how best to train the pilot (man), mentally and physically, to accomplish the tasks set before him. Systems such as aircraft design and operation, crew physiology and training and airspace management need to be revamped and updated.

The requirement for crew resource management (CRM), or aircrew coordination training (ACT) in military parlance, has been well documented and attested to. In addition, aircraft systems training has become more intense and more in-depth in the new aircraft designs, especially in multi-crew and complex aircraft such as the MV-22 Osprey Tiltrotor. (see Figure 1) Former training systems detailed training procedures that called for classroom training and simulation/simulator training followed by flight training. Improvements in aircraft flight skills training provide increased flying training capability coupled with reduced training time by integrating a mixed simulation/flight training syllabus, e.g. two to three simulation periods followed by one or two flight training periods covering the same material/skills. In addition, the simulation training will introduce new skills; the following flight periods will further refine/hone those skills.