Life Lessons From Cockpit

Job stress comes in many different forms and affects our body in various ways. Although flying can be fun and therapeutic to some, however to us pilots flying is a profession and therefore we cannot run away from job stress. The sources of job stress and the stressors could be the same as any other jobs; they could be people related or equipment related.

Stress can lead to burnout, causing people to become unhappy and less productive in their work. Job stress will not only affect our health it will also affect our home life as well. Low levels of stress may not be noticeable; slightly higher levels can be good for us to enable us to function at our peak level of performance; whereas high levels of stress can be harmful, contributing to chronic disease.

Flying is a stressful profession. As pilots it is therefore important and crucial for us to carefully manage our stress level in order for us to perform at our peak and at the same time to have some available space and reserve to manage the increased stress level during non-normal situations.

Let us take a look at the diagram below. Assuming that a pilot starts work at a stress level at point “A.” Throughout the flight his stress level will vary according to the situation in the cockpit. Now assuming that he has a non-normal situation and his stress level is now increased. Since his stress level when he started work was relatively low, he still has some “reserve” left during the non-normal situation (his stress level is still below his tolerance or coping level).

If however he were to start work with a rather higher stress level of “B” and assuming the same conditions exist, now during a non-normal situation, his stress level will be above his tolerance (coping) level. This can be dangerous as his performance will be affected. He might exhibit stress symptoms that could affect his thoughts, feelings and behaviour and that could be detrimental to the flight.

Written by Azharuddin Osman

Tags: Cockpit, flying, life lessons, performance, Pilots, Stress

In this lesson from the cockpit I would like to share with you how pilots minimize communication errors in the cockpit.

• Different words mean different things. We interpret words based on our own experiences and sometimes our culture. Take the work “sex” as an example. My interpretation and understanding of the word would definitely be different from yours. There are many other words that could be misinterpreted and therefore to eliminate this during flights, pilots and air traffic controllers use a “standard phraseology” for their communication. What they need to do is to learn them and use them for communication during all phases of the flight.
• Clarify. Besides flying the aircraft, pilots have other responsibilities as well in the cockpit. They have to carry out other tasks such as managing the aircraft systems, monitoring the weather enroute as well as monitoring the enroute charts and maps. During a non-normal situation their workload will be increased further. All the above will have to be accomplished whilst communicating with the air traffic controllers (ATC) and because of the distraction, they could easily misinterpret the ATC instructions. To eliminate miscommunication and misinterpretation of ATC instructions, the procedure calls for both pilots to listen out to the communication and whenever in doubt, they have to clarify with the other pilot as well as with the controllers.
• Good command of English. English is the medium used in aviation. As such it is a requirement for all pilots and air traffic controllers (ATC) to have a good command of the English language. It is now a mandatory requirement for all pilots and controllers to sit for a periodic “aviation English” test. Unsuccessful candidates will have to be retested or to attend a crash course in English before the retest, if required.
• Proper workload management. Normally the pilot who is not manipulating the flight control is responsible for communicating with the controllers and the other pilot monitoring. The pilot tasked with the communicating with the controllers is also responsible for carrying out other tasks to provide support to the flying pilot. As such it is important for the Captain to ensure that the pilot doing the communication is not overly stressed and overloaded with other unrelated tasks.

Witten by Azharuddin Osman

Tags: aircraft, Cockpit, Communication, life lessons, Pilots, workload management