Life Lessons From Cockpit

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

During flight pilots communicate all the time. This goes on until the airplane arrives at the destination, engines shut down and all passengers and crew disembark from the airplane. In fact communication is one of the critical elements, or components of a flight. Studies have shown that a lot of incidents or accidents happened during flights due to a breakdown in communication in the cockpit amongst the pilots as well as miscommunication between pilots and others such as air traffic controllers and engineers.

In our daily life, we too are continuously communicating. It is often said that “we cannot not communicate.” Think about that for a moment. Since we are doing it all the time we become unconscious about it. Yet how many times have we misinterpreted when someone was talking to us or we have been misunderstood when we were talking or saying something to another person.

Oftentimes we underestimate the importance of good communication skills. One can learn to be a good communicator from books or by attending courses. Learning is one thing, we also need to practice this newly learned skill and be aware and be conscious of the response that we get whenever we communicate.

Just how important is good communication in the cockpit? Well, from my own experience I know for sure that it is very, very important. In fact it is crucial for the safety of the flight. Take a typical long haul flight as an example. It flies not only over long periods of time; it also flies across many countries. Although everyone speaks English, however each of them speaks English with a different accent.

Another area that could be of concern is the altitude that an aircraft flies at. Some countries use feet as the unit of measurement whereas some use meters. At most airports the surface wind is reported in knots whereas some other airports report surface wind in meters per second. Apart from the above, different countries could have different air traffic control procedures. All the above could be confusing and if not properly clarified while communicating, it could be a safety hazard.

In my next post I will explain how communication errors are minimized in the cockpit.

Written by Azharuddin Osman

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

How many times have we been caught unaware in a situation and because we were not prepared, we did not react or even if we did react to the situation, we wished that we could have done better. To put it bluntly, we were caught with our “pants down.”

Pilots are trained to be vigilant and to be constantly on the lookout for things that could disrupt or that could change the desired outcome of the flight. It is important for pilots to not only identify events, happenings and phenomenon from outside and from inside the aircraft, they have to also come out with steps and action plans to mitigate them.

These events and phenomenon are termed as threats. We live in a less that perfect world and oftentimes pilots fly in environments with a lot of threats. The following are some of the threats that could be faced by pilots during flight.

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Pilots are quite used to them and those diligent ones will feel comfortable flying in those types of environment. Only the ill prepared ones often get caught. What happens when threats are not mitigated? Well these could result in errors. And what will happen when errors are committed? Three things could happen:

• Errors are trapped
• Errors become inconsequential, or
• Errors are exacerbated and develop into bigger errors.

When errors are exacerbated and develop into bigger errors incidents or accidents could result and some could be catastrophic.

So what can we learn from the way those pilots identify and mitigate threats? Well the following could be some of those that we could apply to our everyday life:

• In what ever that we do be vigilant and be aware of things that could affect what we are doing thus the outcome.
• Once we have identified “threats,” come up with action plans or steps to mitigate them. Be prepared and tell ourselves and team members what we should do when such threats occur.
• Remember that a phenomenon could be threatening in one situation but not in other situations. As an example, driving with bald tires might be alright when driving on dry roads, but will definitely be a threat on wet roads and going downhill.
• Threats could be inconsequential. What we need to do is to be aware of errors being committed as a result of those threats. If we are not aware of errors, they could result in more errors being committed until we are overwhelmed with them and unable to cope.
• Once we are aware of the error or errors being committed do something to break the chain of errors. Studies have shown that incidents or accidents are caused by a series of errors being committed and not recognized or trapped.

Written by Azharuddin Osman

Tags: Cockpit, errors, life lessons, Pilots, threat