Air-traffic has grown rapidly in the last twenty years and concern has been mounting about
the safety implications of mis-recognition of call-signs by both pilots and air-traffic controllers.
This paper presents the results of a preliminary study into perceptual (ie non-cognitive)
confusions in two closed vocabularies of the type used as aircraft call-signs. Conventional
methods of subjective and objective testing were found to be unsuitable for our aim of
predicting potential confusions within a vocabulary. Hence a method for modelling confusion …