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Psychologists have offered the aviation industry a lot of advice, but much of what we do comes under the general title of ‘High Performance Tasks’. The selection and training of pilots is designed to ensure that only those candidates who are capable of performing at a high level reach military cockpits or commercial flight decks. Nevertheless, once on the ‘front line’ not all pilots perform as well as the most effective crews. So let’s review the aspects of high performance tasks:
- Extensive practise is required
The most effective crews seek out opportunities for self learning, maybe not every day, but regularly. They revise the manuals routinely, and don’t wait until just before the next line or simulator check. They hand fly the aircraft, but only when appropriate – there are too many hand flying ‘aces’ who’s knowledge of the autoflight systems are woefully inadequate. Equally, there are pilots who rarely hand fly and are always out of practise. It cannot be emphasised enough that experience only comes from regular, focused, practise, not the hours or years in the job.
- Substantial numbers of candidates fail to achieve proficiency.
Hopefully, those that are on the line have already passed this hurdle, but there is no room for complacency.
- Performance of experts is qualitatively different to novices
Once again, experienced doesn’t necessarily mean expert. The experts have put in time and effort to achieve the skill levels that they demonstrate.
One of the aims of the extensive practise mentioned above is to ‘automate’ a task in our brain. An automated task is one that can be rapidly executed with economy of effort. To become automated, the skill or task requires extensive practise – not just a few minutes thought before a check. Mentally and physically rehearsing a drill, and the location of the switches, will all help on that ‘dark and stormy night’ when life gets busy.
For the multi-crew pilots though, a word of caution – none of this means that hands should be flashing around the flight deck like lightning. The other pilot should never be taken by surprise by your actions. Often the most effective way to achieve this is to get the other pilot to carry out the action on your command. Funny old thing, that’s generally what the check list instructions say.
The statistics suggest that distraction is a contributing cause to over half of all aviation accidents. So , as an industry, we clearly need to try to improve our performance.
An important skill for pilots is self discipline, and this is the skill that needs to come to the fore in avoiding distraction. Many airline’s procedures enforce a ‘sterile cockpit’, whereby all extraneous conversation is banned during busy phases of flight. Typical rules are ‘sterile’ below 10,000′, or ‘sterile’ in all climbs and descents. When I review distraction based incidents that I have been involved in, the vast majority would not have happened if, on that day, I had been fully adhering to the sterile cockpit rule as well as I normally aim to do.
The lesson is clear – do not cause distraction by breaking the sterile cockpit rule, and do not join in when others risk distraction by breaking the sterile cockpit rule.
Of course distraction isn’t only self-induced. When a warning system message occurs, it is inevitable that all the crew will be drawn to the message, whether it be a remote warning, or on ECAM/EICAS. Once again though, we need to train ourselves to have the self discipline to react correctly. The Pilot Flying (PF) either has to steel them self to resist the temptation to get involved or, if workload is low, only have a quick look in order to gather some independent information. PFs task is to aviate – fly the plane. If you want to get more involved with working the problem, then you can always hand control of the flying to the other pilot. Don’t get too carried away though, if you change roles too often it just adds to the distraction risk.
This is why judgement and self discipline are such crucial pilot skills. If PF gets involved too much with identifying and analysing the problem, then distraction sets in and errors and accidents occur. However, if PF sticks rigidly to pure ‘aviation’, in a dogmatic and simplistic way, then opportunities to monitor the other pilot are missed. Monitoring is a two way street.
So, avoid distraction and you are well on the way to avoiding becoming another incident/accident statistic. At the same time, don’t be a distraction dogmatist – use your judgement to decide how much you need to be involved in monitoring the other pilot and the systems. Use your judgement wisely, and you will be part of a highly effective crew. Use it poorly, and you reduce the effectiveness of the crew.
When I started training as a pilot, almost 35 years ago, one of the classroom subjects was called Aircraft Operation. The subject was mainly concerned with the practical aspects of operating an aircraft. Other classes dealt with technical subjects or meteorology or the actual business of flying an aircraft, but this one was all about ‘operating’.
Now this confused me a bit. Having come from a nautical background I was well aware that the nautical word for the all encompassing aspects of operating a craft at sea was ‘Seamanship’. I was also aware that there was a concept in aviation called ‘Airmanship’. But it soon became apparent that while seamen tend to know exactly what Seamanship means, airmen seem to struggle to define Airmanship. Perhaps that is why the RAF called the subject Aircraft Operation, and not Airmanship.
This is curious, as the dictionary definitions of the two words show that they are directly equivalent. They both encompass the knowledge and skills required to be proficient in matters nautical or aeronautical.
To this day Airmanship remains a hard subject to pin down. A few years ago a large aerospace company was engaged in research for the Royal Air Force’s training system. It became apparent to the researchers that they needed a definition, and yet every pilot had a different answer. Eventually the researchers concluded that Airmanship was a combination of Judgement, Control, and Discipline. I like that, as it combines the technical and non-technical skills.
Despite the confusion over definitions, I really enjoyed the Aircraft Operation lessons as they gave the all import structure on which to hang the other subjects, which then gave the art of aviation more clarity beyond simply flying.
So, what else did I learn in those lessons? The most valuable topic was ‘Situational Awareness’ (SA), as it seemed to give substance to the concept of ‘knowing what’s going on’. Indeed, for many people, ‘knowing what’s going on’ is an adequate and simple definition of SA.
As I gained flying experience and reduced my errors that had their roots in lack of knowledge or skill, I came to realise that many of the remaining errors came from lapses in SA, often as a result of distraction.
Distraction can be dealt with under the ‘discipline’ part of Airmanship. Another word that springs to mind in this context is ‘Integrity’ or intellectual honesty, which is closely associated with ‘discipline’. So, if you act with integrity and discipline, you are likely to avoid the twin crimes of distraction or distracting.
What about SA though? If we can define Airmanship, we ought to be able to improve on ‘knowing what’s going on’ as a definition of SA. For that I am indebted to Dr Mica Endsley of SA Technologies, an American research company. Dr Endsley defines SA as:
The Perception of what is happening (Level 1)
The Understanding of what is happening (Level 2), and
The Projection of the future effect (Level 3)
Dr Endsley has also described SA as the engine that drives the decision making process.
So, armed with a clearer definition of SA, what do we use SA for? Well, it certainly feeds information into any decision making process, and decision making is a key part of operating aircraft.
If the gathering of information, or diagnosis, phase of decision making only uses Level 1 SA though, then the option generation phase becomes a bit of a stab in the dark. So it is important that all 3 levels are considered.
It is also important that any decision making process ends with ‘review’, so that a loop is formed and SA is continuously updated.
The review process is only effective though if the crew are flexible, and are comfortable with developing the plan of action as the situation evolves. This is what the highly effective crews do – if the solution is obvious, they start to execute the plan while it is still developing, but they continue to gather and evaluate information. If the plan needs to be modified, then they do so.
Those highly effective crews are the ones who have good technical and operational knowledge. They are also sufficiently practised that most of the operation can be executed with minimal impact on workload capacity. As workload is closely linked to pace, it stands to reason that the more effective crews will be able to expedite where required, yet still have a lower workload and more spare capacity than a less well organised crew. Notice that I am treating SA as shared information. If only one crew member has high SA, the total SA will be dragged down if he is sitting next to an SA ‘black hole’. So effective communication is vital, and that includes timely communication with ATC, Cabin Crew, and passengers.
Another benefit of actively working on SA is that it maintains a level of acceptance that threats and errors will occur, and that they will need to be dealt with. There is no such thing as a perfect day or a perfect crew. So Threat and Error Management (TEM) is also an important part of aircraft operation.
I am indebted to Dave Robinson of British Airways for his contribution to TEM. While completing his studies on Human Factors (Dave was one of Prof James Reason’s final students before that guru of CRM retired), Dave developed a TEM model to add on to Dr Endsley’s 3 levels of SA – Avoid, Trap, and Mitigate.
AVOID threats that are picked up early,
TRAP threats and errors that are already occurring and,
MITIGATE the effects of threats and errors that cannot be avoided or trapped
At the end of the day, that is also what the non normal checklists are for. We can’t repair the aircraft whilst airborne, but we can trap and mitigate the effects of technical malfunctions.
I have mentioned Decision Making, but have deliberately avoided recommending any particulate acronym for that process. There are many acronyms out there, just choose one that works for you. What I do offer though is consideration of the topics mentioned here.
In summary, some of the most important aspects of effective Aircraft Operation can be distilled into a series of three letter acronyms (TLAs):
Airmanship – JCD – Judgement, Control, Discipline
SA – PUP – Perceive, Understand, Project
TEM – ATM – Avoid, Trap, Mitigate
So, as always,
Have fun, don’t crash!
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