Primacy and Exercise - Useful Tool/Powerful Weapon

The Fez

Analog Millennial
I just want to share an experience I had today during a checkride that I think a great many young instructors can easily duplicate and create an almost certain path to heartache for themselves and their students.

Here's some background: I am a rotary-wing CFI/CFII as a civilian and also a USAF Reserve CSAR H-60 pilot. To say the two worlds are about as far apart as they can be (both regulation/policy-wise, as well as aircraft performance and aggressiveness in maneuvering) within the same category, is an understatement. However, I found out today just how powerful the Laws of Learning can be across that difference, particularly the laws of primacy and exercise.

Here's the story: Air Force H-60 pilots undergo two different types of checkrides, an Instrument/Qualification and Mission check. This will focus on the Instrument/Qualification or "Inst/Qual" check, which assesses the pilot's general aircraft/systems knowledge as well as instrument proficiency. Aside from the instrument portion, the checkride deals with handling in-flight emergency procedures. As a student pilot in the H-60, right up until today, the flow of an Inst/Qual check, and the emergency procedure flights we're required to complete every 90 days which duplicate the emergency procedures examined in the checkride, has always been the same. 4 different emergency procedures pertaining to specific aircraft systems followed by an instructor/evaluator demonstrated autorotation and one or two student/examinee autorotations. ALWAYS.

On today's flight, we had completed the instrument portion of the examination and had begun working through the emergency procedures. All was going well until we began autorotations. My evaluator demonstrated a straight-ahead autorotation after requesting opposite direction traffic due to wind limitations. Immediately after I took the controls and began to climb out to set up for my autorotation, we were forced back to prevailing traffic direction due to an emergency aircraft inbound. As I circled, waiting for the emergency aircraft to land, my evaluator induced another malfunction that I hadn't anticipated. I called for and ran the appropriate checklist, but in my mind we were doing my autorotation next, after all, we ALWAYS finish with autorotations. After another pattern direction change, I began setting up my auto. My flight engineer even tried to throw me a bone with, "So...what are we doing now?" but my brain was locked on my autorotation. I shacked my entry parameters and initiated my auto, followed by an immediate, "Go around" from my evaluator. I thought back to the entry and wondered if I had descended or slowed from our minimum parameters for the maneuver and then verbalized them. "What about this?" my evaluator said as he points at the illuminated caution light from the induced emergency.

Two things screamed out from the depths of my brain. First, I was utterly confused, as we have an operating limitation for performing an auto with the specific emergency induced, and thought it was a test (I even verbalized the limit as I set up the maneuver). Second, I knew of no regulation prohibiting me from performing an auto with that malfunction. I was wrong on both counts.

Lessons Learned: My evaluator had simply not yet given me a malfunction on that system, something I should've caught at my experience level. I was also unaware of a restriction on instructors/evaluators inducing multiple simulated emergencies. Like most pilots getting a checkride, I was laser-focused on getting it over with. After a not-so-pleasant debrief, I began thinking about why I was so intent on the auto with another malfunction present. Surprisingly, my FOI knowledge rose up from the depths to give me this:

The Law of Primacy tells us that the first way a student is shown something is usually the way that it sticks. Additionally, the Law of Exercise is how we not only improve performance, but reinforce proper procedures so that students do things the right way out of habit. But these laws are a double-edged sword. If we, as instructors, allow students to practice the same things, the same way, every time we fly, the student can become handicapped when it comes to dealing with an unexpected change. When I instruct, I change the flow of maneuvers as much as is feasible. But I wasn’t “taking it across the street” to my other flying job. I was doing these Emergency Procedure flights the same way every time because that’s just the way they’re done in that particular flying world.

I came perilously close to a hooked checkride today because I was not applying my knowledge from my instructing job to my other highly-demanding flying activity. As an instructor, I tell my students to take charge of their training, know what tasks they need to accomplish, and make plans to accomplish those tasks. As a student and line pilot in the Air Force, I am expected to do the same. However, in both civil and military aviation, it can be too easy to cede the requirements of the checkride to the evaluator so the examinee can expend spare brain bytes on flying well.

For me, no more. From now on, I will make every effort to plan on changes being made and adapting the tasks I need to perform to the situation at hand, just like I do on every other flight. Don’t take a second of flight time for granted just because it is a checkride with a set list of things to accomplish. Run the show as you see fit and do not allow the “Well, that’s how I’ve always done it” excuse to ruin your day.

Thanks for reading.
 
Thank you for that insightful bit of your experience; about the damage to pilot training that is occurring in the current "standardized" (read legal liability) practice of administering "checkrides" .
In the old days, pilot candidates were tested with distractions from the "norm" - it was assumed that you could perform the "standard", the actual test was how/ what you did when a distraction/ deviation occurred, either from real life, or examiner induced.
But then the whiners, with their lawyers, started corrupting the system, so that persons can get a commercial pilots license with no demonstration of ability to fly and correlate at the same time.
 
A few somewhat random thoughts.

There are times in training to call "knock off" and reset. More than one accident has occurred when a training event gets out of control. Due to task, multiple "emergencies", rushing, etc. Some examples come to mind in the -60. A student who reacted to a fire light before I could do anything by immediately shutting off the wrong engine (fortunately it was a false fire).
Giving an NVG stans ride in the desert on down wind to our base I gave a simulated fire and, due to primacy, the "student" initiated a landing in the desert rather than turning to the airfield. Primacy- he was taught at Mother Rucker to land right below him if there was a fire. He did not even consider the berms we would hit on landing
An inbound emergency may not be the best time to introduce a new emergency, but I was not there.
Standards. The idea that one must teach the test due to a PTS is the lazy persons out and the sign of a poor instructor. My kids go to a great school that does not "teach the test" aside from giving the kids one practice test to see what it is like. Guess what? The kids perform well above the national average on the standard tests.
Same with flying. I tell students that I will not "teach them the checkride", but they will do well on the check ride. And they do.
In spite of what I wrote above distractions are part of flying and checkrides. I like taking pre solo students to class C airports just so they can deal with distractions while still flying. Heck, I had one student on his first solo when a blimp busted through our non towered airport on the wrong frequency. He dealt with it even though it was a scenario I never thought to cover.
We like to think as pilots that we can multitask but that is a myth. To paraphrase Curly from "City Slikers" the pilot really needs to figure out what the most important task is at the moment rather than trying to do multiple tasks at once.
Finally, one of the things I learned after leaving the military is that we did not do a great job of teaching multi crew ops. Yeah, we can spout the CRM (or whatever we call it today), acronyms but we did not really practice it as IPs. The -60 is a two pilot aircraft with a crew chief. This idea of forcing the pilot getting evaluated to operate in a single pilot bubble is dumb. In the airline world if I am getting a check ride the FO is expected to be a good FO. If he just idly sits by and lets me bust something he can be pulled off line and retrained. We fight the way we train and if we train to sit in a bubble we will sit in a bubble.
 
My boss calls that "expectation bias".

This is something I've been finding in my own flying very recently. I've been known to do things simply because I was taught to do them that way, without necessarily thinking through the how and why of the context at the time.

I don't think it's necessarily something which can be magically eradicated; I think I just have to put a little more thought into tasks, instead of "do this thing, get banana".

So - yeah - really helpful posts all around, and not just for the military guys.
 
Finally, one of the things I learned after leaving the military is that we did not do a great job of teaching multi crew ops. Yeah, we can spout the CRM (or whatever we call it today), acronyms but we did not really practice it as IPs. The -60 is a two pilot aircraft with a crew chief. This idea of forcing the pilot getting evaluated to operate in a single pilot bubble is dumb. In the airline world if I am getting a check ride the FO is expected to be a good FO. If he just idly sits by and lets me bust something he can be pulled off line and retrained. We fight the way we train and if we train to sit in a bubble we will sit in a bubble.

You'll be happy to hear this is changing - from the school house down to the unit. Now, even on checkrides the pilot receiving the ride AND the IP (and CE) are part of the crew. During an EP, I, as the instructor, am responsible for my PNF duties. In fact quite often I have to stop the pilot on the controls from just spitting out the whole EP and have him focus purely on aircraft control and his underlined steps while I manage all the PNF duties. We also give EPs while the other guy is not on the controls so he can practice/get evaluated on doing PNF duties.
 
Finally, one of the things I learned after leaving the military is that we did not do a great job of teaching multi crew ops. Yeah, we can spout the CRM (or whatever we call it today), acronyms but we did not really practice it as IPs. The -60 is a two pilot aircraft with a crew chief. This idea of forcing the pilot getting evaluated to operate in a single pilot bubble is dumb. In the airline world if I am getting a check ride the FO is expected to be a good FO. If he just idly sits by and lets me bust something he can be pulled off line and retrained. We fight the way we train and if we train to sit in a bubble we will sit in a bubble.
I couldn't say it any better myself. The "train how we fight, except for when your reputation and aircraft qualification are on the line" mentality boggles my mind.
 
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