Improving human factors: Decision-making and judgment skills among pilots

All pilots must possess aeronautical knowledge, skill, and judgment in order to properly execute their duties. Pilots gain knowledge and skills from various flight-training and other educational programs in aviation academy. However, decision-making skills and judgment are personal traits that pilots may innately possess or acquire through experience.

Pilot errors resulting from a poor decision or a series of poor decisions decrease the probability of a safe flight and mission success. Thus, recognizing the unknown element and having the power to make wise judgments and decisions on the basis of indications and probabilities when the facts may not be clearly ascertained is very critical. Pilot judgment involves both the ability and motivation to determine relevant information and arrive at a suitable course of action within the available time frame. Aeronautical decision making involves systematic application of that judgment in response to a particular situation. Both of these require the full repertoire of a pilot’s skills, knowledge, and motivation.

Although number of hours and years of flying expertise have been traditional measures of pilot expertise, they are not longer considered sufficient to define an expert pilot. In order to achieve the level of expertise desired in today’s military, a pilot must also:

• Possess adequate self-confidence yet recognize and acknowledge personal limitations and be willing to balance these with help from crewmembers
• Be highly motivated to learn and practice all aspects of flight
• Have superior ability to both focus and multi-task
• Maintain awareness of surroundings and conditions
• Be knowledgeable of an aircraft’s condition indicators
• Be vigilant of and prepared for changing and unusual conditions
• Have first-rate mental ability to diagnose, assess, and resolve risks and problems
• Possess excellent communication skills

The skills required to become an expert pilot fall into the categories of perceptual-motor, cognitive, and metacognitive. Perceptual-motor skills involve the interaction of perception and voluntary movement—i.e., sensing, thinking, and then acting. These can be acquired and honed through practice of a wide variety of actual and imaginary flying conditions and scenarios.

Cognitive skills involve mental processes (e.g., comprehension, judgment, memory, recall, reasoning) and are more complex and difficult to develop. The methods are numerous and varied, including the use of mnemonic devices and schema. Metacognitive skills are those that enable a person to monitor and decide whether his or her level of understanding is adequate for the task at hand. This awareness of one’s knowledge helps pilots become adaptive in even unfamiliar situations and control their cognitive skills.

Read more on how pilots can develop and optimize their expertise in judgment and decision making in a recent online article from SKYbrary. Even if you are not a pilot, you will find valuable information you can use.