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With new technology now in service on the flight decks of commercial aircraft, such benefits as micro‐processors, digital systems and cathode ray tubes (CRTs) provide the pilot and crew with a flexibility never before contemplated. Monotonous monitoring tasks no longer need to be performed and attention can be concentrated on those at which the human can excell (for example, decision making and problem solving). The only condition under which the pilot is overloaded is when equipment is degraded — which, according to one theory, may lead to a consition of underloading. In other words, decreased crew work load and efficient utilisation that result in increases in performance and safety need to be balanced against the possibility of a work load that is too low to motivate the crew, with perhaps a reduction in the ability to deal with emergencies properly.