The “Street Smart” Pilot
Accidents happen. Despite a flight crew’s best effort, gremlins can creep in to the system and lead to undesired outcomes. A street smart pilot is one who attempts to limit the possibility of these gremlins by knowing where and when to find critical information. A street smart pilot is able to detect and compensate for the mistakes of others as well as avoid traps and pitfalls that are all too plentiful in the flying environment.
Several years ago, United Airlines interviewed pilots who had completed at least 25 years of flying with no accidents and asked questions about what it took to be a street smart pilot. The group included pilots from 6 countries and a variety of background from 121 operations to NASA test pilots. Responses were grouped into 3 categories including “Attitude or Mindset”, “Teamwork/Crew Coordination” and finally “Awareness”.
A sampling or responses to each category follow:
Attitude
· There's almost nothing that needs to be done in a hurry while in an aircraft.
· Plan ahead for normal events and be prepared for unexpected contingencies.
· Pay attention to your sixth sense. If something feels wrong, it probably is.
· Keep your options open - never become committed to a single course of action with a high
degree of risk.
· The way to be safe is never to be comfortable.
· Return to basics if you become confused.
· Maintain a healthy level of suspicion.
· Avoid complacency; the minute you think something won't hurt you - it will!
· Never go on a flight with a head full of problems; leave them on the ground or stay on the ground
yourself.
· Be open minded to constructive criticism.
· The common thread among all survivors is common sense.
· The things that get pilots in trouble are incorrect premises and fixation.
Teamwork and Crew Coordination
· Share information with your crew. To the extent that you share information with them, they will
share information with you and tell you if you have made a mistake.
· Don't try to do everything yourself.
· Surprises are nice on birthdays and Christmas, but have no place in aviation. Let everyone
know what you are thinking, planning, and doing.
· Always question, never assume.
· Evaluate the people you fly with - to understand and compensate for their strengths and
weaknesses.
Awareness
· Pilots should give equal priority to landing or going around. Never assume that any approach will
end in a landing.
· Know what data is driving the flight director bars and always monitor and believe the raw data.
· Detailed knowledge of the Flight Management System (FMS) is essential in all glass-cockpit
aircraft.
· Trouble can begin when the wheels touch the runway; yet everybody seems to relax then.
· Maintain a terrain awareness and a general knowledge of the topography over which you are
flying.
· Know where you want to be, where you are, and where you are going.
· Don't touch a switch without looking and knowing what, when, and why you want to move it.
· You don't have time to make all of the mistakes, so you have to learn from others.
· Develop effective listening skills including the ability to filter out lower priority information and
return to it later.
· Listen to others and find out how they do things - then re-evaluate your own habit patterns.
One interesting result of the survey was that in very few cases did any of these pilots mention stick and rudder skills. That makes sense as very few accidents can be attributed to a pilot not being able to fly an airplane. Also, those skills tend to be the ones that we get repetitive training on during simulator events while there isn’t as much emphasis on decision making skills beyond what is required to shoot an approach.
While a conclusion wasn’t drawn from the data collected it is very apparent that many of the responses deal with ways to prevent complacency and provide coping skills that have a history of working in the environment we operate in.