Safety in flying is all about having alternatives. Each trip may offer several different possible routes and a variety of alternates. The departure time and sometimes even the date of departure can be changed if necessary. Once en route, the present and forecast conditions must be analyzed to determine which of various alternatives offer the best possibility of arriving safely at the destination at the desired time. It is also critical to realize when our desired course or an alternative is no longer viable and should be abandoned. Many of the classic aviation accident scenarios, such as continued VFR flight into instrument conditions or attempting an approach under conditions beyond the capability of the airplane or the pilot, are the result of a pilot refusing to accept that the desired path is no longer viable.
A new book by Dr. Dan Ariely titled Predictably Irrational sheds significant insight into why a pilot might continue into a situation when it would seem to be obvious that course of action should be abandoned. Dr. Ariely, who is a professor of behavioral economics at MIT, devised an amazingly simple computer game to examine how people deal with alternatives. The game started with three doors on the screen. The subject would click on a door to select it and then click on it again to open it. Each time a door was opened the subject earned a small amount of money as indicated on the computer screen.
