Life Lessons From Cockpit

When pilots fly, they could be exposed to environment and situations beyond their control that could test their knowledge and skills to the limit. This is where their experience could play a part in dealing with adverse situations. Whilst experience is necessary what is more important is the type of training that a pilot goes through, throught his career.

In the old days all training were conducted in the actual aircraft. As such the type of training that pilots went through was limited due to safety concern and aircraft limitations. With technological advancement pilots training could now be conducted in flight “simulators.” A simulator is a training device, a replica of the airplane cockpit that simulates the experience of flying an aircraft. It has a realistic motion, sound as well as visual to display the outside world to pilots. It is so realistic, that once inside the simulator pilots will easily be immersed in the realm of a flight.

Outside view of a flight simulator

In the simulator, the flight instructor will be able to simulate all types of malfunctions that one could possibly think of. A typical pilot’s training is a flight from point A to point B, subjecting him to various malfunctions and adverse environmental conditions enroute. In a way, the training is similar to training in scenario planning in the corporate world where executives generate strategic plans to cope with future changes in the business world.

[singlepic=80,320,240,,center]

Flight Instructor’s Station

What the simulator training does is to create an experience data base for the various scenarios that pilots could use when faced with actual conditions. That is why the more experienced he is, the more data and scenarios he will have in his “experience file.”

A typical training session - approach and landing

Lessons learned from the strict pilots discipline is the type of training that they have to go through before they could take charge of the multi million dollar airplane. A pilot is considered as the CEO and he should be able to lead and react to the changes to the environment and to make decisions affecting the flight. Perhaps we should do this too in the corporate world where executives are subject to similar simulated training before they could be at the helm of the corporation.

Written by Azharuddin Osman

Tags: flight simulator, Life Lessons from Cockpit, Pilots, scenario planning, Training

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.

[singlepic=78,320,240,,center]

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

Another life lesson that I learned from the cockpit is about teamwork as practiced by the pilots and cabin crew, about how flight crews build the team and how they maintain team cohesiveness especially in an emergency situation.

In any organization or whenever we are involved in any group activities, working as a team is very important. Why is it important for pilots and cabin crew to work well as a team? Well, in aviation, studies have shown that a significant portion of accidents were caused by breakdown in teamwork, where crew members were working as individuals rather than as a team. And I am sure in life too a lot of failures that are encountered in reaching goals, making targets or simply abandoning a project is largely contributed to breakdown in teamwork. Let us now look at how pilots manage to build a good team and maintain that team cohesiveness.

• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Pilots and cabin crew do not fly with the same people all the time. They can be scheduled to fly with anybody and the bigger the crew population is, the lesser will be their chances of flying with the same people. Imagine having to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of so many individuals. Therefore, to prevent team members jostling for positions each time they fly, they have documented and defined the roles and responsibilities of team members. There is no dispute on who will be the leader for the flight and what roles the other team members play during normal conditions as well as in emergencies.

• Use of checklists. From the beginning to the end of the flight pilots refer to their checklists all the time. During non-normal situations, each pilot will be busy with his own designated tasks and there could be periods where the captain might not have the time to monitor his co-pilot. Therefore the use of checklists ensures all the required tasks are accomplished (without supervision) and who is supposed to accomplish a particular task.

• Training to enhance teamwork. Pilots continuously attend training sessions throughout their career. Apart from the twice yearly training to maintain and test their proficiency in flying a particular aircraft, pilots attend other training programs such as the crew resource management (CRM) training. All their training teaches and guides them to work well as a team and to further enhance teamwork by subjecting them to various non-normal situations that encourages them to use the team synergy to solve problems.

We can use the above examples and discipline used by pilots and other members of the flight crew in our daily life. It can be applied when working on a project in the office, when working with family members and anytime when we are in a team to further enhance teamwork and to help produce that winning team.

Written by Azharuddin Osman

Tags: checklists, Life Lessons from Cockpit, Pilots, roles and responsibilities, teamwork, Training