Investigating Potential Negative Age-bias in a Virtual Reality Cognitive Assessment Tool for General Aviation Pilots

General aviation accounts for 94% of aviation accidents, many of which are associated with cognitive factors, such as poor situation awareness, which are more likely to occur among older pilots. The association of cognition and older age with accidents motivated the development of CANFLY, a virtual reality (VR) cognitive health assessment tool for pilots across the lifespan. While CANFLY addresses test validity and generalization to real-world risk, it is important to also ensure that older pilots do not experience negative bias arising from the test's content or VR format. Older pilots should not disproportionately experience cybersickness or other VR effects, which could negatively affect test performance. In the present study, data from an online study was used to investigate the interest and sentiments of pilots towards a VR-based cognitive assessment. A second study involved pilots flying within a full-scale simulator and the second in a VR flight simulator (CANFLY prototype).