A major US airline is tweaking its SOPs. I like the way they now express their philosophy, and priority, of standard operating procedures. In six words:
Category: Article
1 in 5 Biz Jet Pilots are Stupid?
Ripped from the aviation press headlines: One in five business jet pilots don’t do a full flight-control check before takeoff. Actually one in five is a bit of an exaggeration. The would be 20%. The more precise number is 17.66%. And that’s actually a per-flight percentage, so maybe the percentage of pilots is a little less. But WTF Batman! 17.66%? …
Meditating Military Helicopter Pilots
A peer-reviewed scientific study published this year shows the positive impact of meditation on personnel in two Norwegian Air Force helicopter squadrons. This was not new-age wishful thinking, or sloppy science self-reporting that some people felt good. No, this was university and Air Force doctors and scientists taking chemical measurements of salivary cortisol, testing performance on computer-based cognitive tasks, and comparing the …
Do ‘Brain-Training’ Games Make You a Better Pilot?
The Association for Psychological Science recently published a massive 200-page research report on brain training programs, seeing if fun cognitive tasks or games can enhance performance on other tasks. Peer-reviewed, respected authors, fully-referenced. It covered all the valid studies that have examined this question, a huge research database. And the results? Based on this examination, we find extensive evidence that brain-training …
Checklist Complete! Or is It?
This airline training slide explains ‘active monitoring’ – visualize, act, compare. You must look for something, not just at something: It’s easy to say we should be mentally flying the aeroplane, but it’s also kind of a cop out. So it’s a nice addition to have some concrete ideas on how to actually do it.
Are You a Low-Gain Pilot?
Reading the (excellent) new book Into the Black, about the flight test history of the Space Shuttle, I was intrigued by this line: “Engle was a low-gain pilot. Like Charles Lindbergh or Chuck Yeager, he barely moved the stick, anticipating the need to do so and making small, necessary corrections in plenty of time. His inputs were smooth and progressive, …
It Remains a Puzzle
How to land? Last night, in the dark of 16L, everything looked perfect. I gently bought the A320 into a nice flare, and was rewarded with an OK, but harder than I wanted, landing. It was safe. Many would say it was good. But I was disgruntled. I can do better. Often the final touch-down remains a puzzle to me. …
Airmanship at a Distance
This is a sad story. But important to think about. For we are all our brother’s keeper. The news headline this weekend was ‘Flight school sued over death of student‘. Fox5 reported: A 21-year-old’s dream of becoming a pilot was cut short when during flight school his plane came crashing down, killing him, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in …
Procedural Drift and the Sandbar
On 3 January 2015, the large ship MV Hoegh Osaka left the British port of Southhampton. An hour later she made a turn to port, then began listing markedly to one side. Soon enough the rudder and propellor were out the water. In flying terms, ‘departure from controlled float’ we could say. Fifteen minutes after the turn she was grounded on the …
The Secrets of the Wave Pilots
There is a wonderful long-read article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine titled The Secrets of the Wave Pilots. It never mentions flying or airmanship, but it’s thought-provoking contemplative stuff for any aviator concerned about visual flying skills. And it’s an in-depth romp through animal navigation, GPS, modern brain science and almost lost ancient knowledge. The glue of the story …