Why Smart Pilots Crash

Ive noticed there is a bias, sometimes spoken aloud, that a pilot who made some sort of a mistake and had an accident was either not terribly bright, lacked basic skills or just plain didnt have the magical right stuff. As an instrument instructor, Ive certainly seen pilots with poor skills or who werent terribly bright or had lousy judgment, and some of them crashed an airplane. Ive also seen some extraordinarily good pilots who were possessed of all the right stuff imaginable, who also made mistakes and crashed.

rdurden

Tuesday, August 25, 2015 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

NASA research challenges the bias that only unskilled pilots crash, revealing that even highly competent and expert pilots make mistakes due to predictable human factors.
Key factors contributing to pilot error include stress, which narrows attention and impairs strategic thinking, along with "plan-continuation bias," a strong desire to complete the mission despite deteriorating conditions.
High workload, multitasking, surprise, and adverse weather further exacerbate these issues, reducing a pilot's cognitive capacity and often forcing them into a reactive decision-making mode.
To mitigate these risks, pilots should be aware of these cognitive limitations and establish pre-defined "hard and fast bottom lines" to simplify decision-making and enable proactive plan abandonment when conditions become unsafe.

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I’ve noticed there is a bias, sometimes spoken aloud, that a pilot who made some sort of a mistake and had an accident was either not terribly bright, lacked basic skills or just plain didn’t have the magical “right stuff.” As an instrument instructor, I’ve certainly seen pilots with poor skills or who weren’t terribly bright or had lousy judgment, and some of them crashed an airplane. I’ve also seen some extraordinarily good pilots who were possessed of all the right stuff imaginable, who also made mistakes and crashed.

A few years ago a team at NASA did intense research into why smart pilots crash. The team, lead by NASA’s Chief Scientist for Aerospace Human Factors, Key Dismukes, himself an experienced pilot, looked at a series of airline accidents—although the accidents could well have been general aviation airplanes on IFR flight plans. The team published its results in a book, The Limits of Expertise: Rethinking Pilot Error and the Causes of Airline Accidents. (A related presentation is online at: human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/flightcognition/article2.htm). It’s not only eye-opening—it takes a refreshingly common sense approach to understanding why smart, competent pilots crash and what can be done about it.