In our book, Automation Airmanship, we argue that one of the most powerful influences on how we can successfully shape 21st-century airmanship is to adopt some of the findings and concepts from recent advances in the field of cognitive neuroscience (don’t quit reading just yet—stick with me). This field has made great strides in mapping …
I recently returned from giving a talk to the Southern California Aviation Association, one of many business aviation groups that are constantly promoting safe practices across the profession. As part of their Safety Stand-down for 2014, I was privileged to be able to address their members on the subject of Monitoring—the 5th Principle of Automation …
There are many “models” which have been offered up to flight crews over the past several decades that seek to explain the role of automation on the flight deck. Some have proven remarkably durable and easy to adopt, others have persisted in spite of the fact that they only obscure the essential knowledge that we …
It could not be a more fitting time for this last piece in our 3-part Monitoring series than at the end of a week during which aviation safety news has been dominated by findings in the Asiana 214 accident in San Francisco, nearly a year ago. In its hearing on the subject, the NTSB stated …
We’re in the middle of a three-part series on monitoring and attention – two of the most commented on airmanship skills in the industry today. In our last post we elaborated on Posner’s Spotlight model of attention, simplified graphically below, to describe what is likely the most simple and accurate description of how the brain …
If we were forced to choose only one of the Nine Principles outlined in our book, Automation Airmanship, whose mastery would lead to the greatest leap in individual and team performance in aviation (or any other high-risk/high-reliability endeavor), we would choose the Fifth Principle, Monitoring. For it is in monitoring that we find foundational knowledge …
In a recent talk given to a large regional aviation group, we elaborated on the 3rd principle of Automation Airmanship – Data Entry – to some initial skepticism of the audience. It seems the general feeling that prevails among many flight crews is that wherever human operators are involved in data input, there we must …
Sixty-three years ago this week one of the earliest commercially available computers was delivered to the US Government by the Remington Rand Corporation, UNIVAC-1. The joke that circulated for years afterward goes like this: A bunch of scientists created a huge machine capable of complex calculations and called it UNIVAC. Eager to test their invention, …
I often hear from experienced modern aviators when I’m presenting the precepts of Automation Airmanship to groups, both large and small: “What’s so different about your approach to operating the contemporary flight deck from what most people are already doing?” and, “Why should I adopt it?” Two great questions; to be honest, they are the …
Sometimes it’s hard to believe that the seemingly simplest flight deck duties are in fact the hardest to grasp, remaining elusive for decades in spite of the intense analysis that our industry constantly undergoes. Even the most up-to-the-minute aviation safety news of our time will report that poor monitoring weighed heavily in findings of “pilot …