Developing Judgment

Making the go/no-go decision can demand more experience than the low-time pilot has. Decide when to call it a day or to take a look, but with a solid alternative.

Tom Turner

Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 12:00 AM ET

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Key Takeaways:

Poor pilot judgment, particularly regarding aviation risks, is often rationalized and reinforced by peers or instructors, leading to a distorted perception of acceptable risk.
Pilots are prone to complacency, where increasing confidence can lead to higher risk acceptance over time, especially if significant events are survived and rationalized instead of prompting a re-evaluation of safety.
Accidents often stem from a mismatch between aircraft capability and pilot experience, alongside the denial of operational problems and attempts to compensate rather than address underlying issues.

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I was in the FBO shack with my instructor, discussing regulations as part of the ground instruction requirement for my flight review. A short, muscular man entered the building, his nearly new composite airplane shining outside in the cold morning sun. Behind the FBO counter another CFI, the glass-cockpit aircrafts local factory-authorized instructor, stood in greeting. I overhead their exchange:

“Hi, doc,” he smiled. “How was your flight down last night?”

The first real cold snap of autumn was upon us, and the skies had been cloudy the night before. The glass-cockpit pilot almost bragged in reply: “We had ice all the way, down to about 3000 feet. But I broke out on the approach. There was about a quarter inch on the wings and tail when we landed.” The pilot actually laughed. “We made it home all right.”

The instructor replied: “Yeah, you dont really need to worry about it until you get half an inch or more.” Yikes!

Good Judgment

This kind of exchange happens all the time. A pilot goes beyond the edge, but through skill and (usually) luck things work out okay in the end. Simply surviving is seen instead as confirmation of superior piloting ability. If he or she talks about the experience at all, other pilots often help rationalize decisions made or, in this case, severely downplay the risk and overtly support the decision to face it.

The suggestion is strong that, not only was it okay to fly an airplane with no real ice protection in night IMC while accumulating ice, but that it would be acceptable to do it again so long as the situation was not twice as bad (half an inch of ice as opposed to one-quarter) next time. Such reinforcement is extremely persuasive if the other pilot is high-time (from the viewpoint of the listener), an airline or Commercial pilot, an instructor or someone seen as speaking with the authority of the airplane manufacturer.

“Good judgment” is hard to define. I know that being hit with demerits for “bad judgment” was the death knell for me or my compatriots in Air Force Officer Training School. Bad judgment seemed to be loosely defined as doing something embarrassing, contrary to existing rules and norms, or flat-out dumb.

“Good judgment,” then, might be defined as “doing things in accordance with existing standards, where the outcome is positive, easily defendable with minimal explanation and, in most instances, never requires explanation at all.” As pilots, we should strive not only to arrive without injury or damage to the airplane, but in a manner where a safe landing was never an issue. As the Practical Test Standards put it, “the successful outcome is never seriously in doubt.”

Complacency

Accepting risk can follow distinct patterns during the flying-life of a pilot, as graphically presented on the opposite page. Risk is kept as low as possible during flight training-high winds, poor weather and maximum-endurance trips are not compatible with initial learning-and the newly-certificated pilot generally has a low comfort level with risk upon graduation. As the pilot gains experience, and perhaps follow-on training (FAASTeam training, on-line courses, etc.), his or her comfort level includes more exposure to risk. That “license to learn” is paying off.

Most pilots dont actively train beyond this point, and complacency starts to set in. After all, having a couple hundred hours sounds like a lot of experience to a pilot just starting out. Complacency disguises itself as confidence, and tends to cause pilots to accept higher and higher levels of risk.