Life Lessons From Cockpit

Each day when we go through life we will encounter events. Some of them could be new to us whereas some others could be the same events that we routinely faced before. These events could be problems, hardships or pleasant encounters. At the end of the day we go back to our home, take our well deserved rest and wake up the next morning to face another day. We will do this day in and day out, years after years going through life’s experiences. But, do we learn anything from these experiences? And how many of us will take the trouble to reflect on the day’s experiences that we went through and make an attempt to learn something from them? If only we were to discipline ourselves and learn from all of our experiences we will definitely develop to be a better person than what we are now.

The following is my four step process that I use to learn from my experience in flying that we can also use to learn from our daily life experiences:

Step 1 – The Experience

At the end of each flight I make it a point to mentally replay the flight, from take-off to landing, taking note of areas or sections of the flight that I did well and those that I was not happy with. After that I will pick and choose a particular area that I feel I could have done better and this will be the experience that I will use for the learning process. This step is merely to identify and prioritise which of the many experiences that I will use.

As an example on a particular flight from Kuala Lumpur to London Heathrow, I am not happy with the “descent” phase of the flight, resulting in being high on my descent profile, resulting in a rushed approach and I feel that I could have done it better. I will then use this phase of the flight and proceed to the next step.

Step 2 – Review

This step involves data collection. What I will do is to replay that particular phase of the flight in greater detail and collect as much information as possible such as the descent speed, the weather, the distance from the airport when the descent was initiated, the workload during this period, the number of aircrafts in the vicinity, any distraction from the cabin crew, the air traffic control and any relevant information that I could use for the next step.

Step 3 – Concluding

Based on the information gathered from step 2 and my previous experience, I could then conclude why I ended up high on the descent profile – the cause or causes.

Step 4 – Planning for next step

This last step is merely to come up with action plans, that is, the steps that I would use to ensure I will not end up in the same situation on my next flight to the same destination.

I have been using the above process and have been encouraged with the result. I am also using it during my training flights to help my trainees learn from their flying experience to further improve themselves.

Written by Azharuddin Osman

Tags: Cockpit, experience, hardships, life lessons, Pilots, problems, Training

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