Category Archives: Risk Management in Flying

Situational Awareness: Do you know where your airplane is?

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The concept of Situational Awareness (SA), goes back as far as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, but where it really starts to show up in America is in the military, during WWI. For most of us, Situational Awareness was attached to human factors work being conducted in the 1990s, and it is still pervasive today in aircrew training. 

There are several definitions out there, but the most widely accepted being, “the perception of elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future” (Endsley, 1995)
 
In our everyday flying we would do well to maintain SA to avoid unwanted surprises that can range from, a minor inconvenience to a complete disaster. Case in point, virtually all CFIT (Controlled Flight into Terrain) accidents are caused by loss of situational awareness. This has been a bitter pill for many. How can a perfectly good airplane, under control of its pilot, fly into the ground? There are many great books out there that discuss Situational Awareness. One of my favorite authors on the subject is Tony Kern. He had dedicated a lifetime to improving aviation safety and has written several outstanding books.
 
One of the largest ingredients in maintaining situational awareness is to not let yourself become distracted. Distraction has been cited in a number of high-profile accidents that are almost too unrealistic to believe, but they are true. Don’t dismiss this threat. In our modern electronic world, it is easier than ever to become distracted.
 
Task saturation is another threat to situational awareness. When we get overloaded, we lose our ability to gauge what is happening around us. It’s like looking at the world through a funnel and the more we get tasked, the narrower our field of view. We also lose orientation with respect to time in these instances. Our natural perception of time can be completely distorted. 
 
Complacency is sometimes referred to as the silent killer because it sneaks up on you. Sometimes complacency is systemic in the individual or it could be just a momentary lapse.  Being lackadaisical, taking things for granted, or otherwise having an attitude that “bad things only happen to other people,” is a great way to end up a statistic. Never take for granted that you are hurdling yourself at very high speeds through the air and that is not a forgiving environment.
 
SItuational awareness is the bedrock of safe flying. Even if everything else is in place; good pilot, good equipment, and good systems, not having a handle on your situation will make all those elements null-and-void. 
 
There is a lot more that can be said, but I wanted to keep it simple and dismiss with all the theory. We can all relate to the information above and it’s important that we avoid re-learning any of those lessons. 
 
Heads up!
 
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9 Simple Ways to Keep From Killing Yourself in an Airplane

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We are going to explore a few commonsense ways to stay out of trouble out there. The headline is a bit of a “grabber”, the point remains that flying is unforgiving. It can be extremely safe, but we can’t take that for granted.


number 1Keep flying the airplane. This is a huge issue. Flying in this era of onboard gadgets, it’s super-easy to forget to fly the airplane. This implications of this are potentially disastrous. This afflicts light airplanes and airliners alike. The outcomes are the same.



number 2
Don’t hit anything, especially the ground. CFIT (or scud running) and hot-dogging have claimed a lot of lives. As an RV-driver the sporty handing of the lineage seems to promote this kind of flying, but no one is immune. Make sure you have situational awareness (CFIT). Don’t be a stunt pilot (hot-dogging). 


number 3
Keep fuel in the tanks. Pouring over accident reports you would be amazed at how many of them involve not having fuel in the airplane. No one wakes up in the morning and plans to run their tanks dry, but it happens with all too much regularity.



number 4

Don’t fly VFR into IMC. Seems simple but in spite of all this high-tech stuff on our airplanes , pilots still violate this tenant that was written in blood.




number 5
Don’t panic. If something abnormal occurs the ability to keep your head is very important. Some one that freezes up or reacts irrationally with inevitably make a bad matter worse.



number 6
Stay proficient. The best safety device is a proficient pilot (not the parachute). Pilots lacking in this area are not only ill-equipped to handle an emergency, they are likely to produce one.



number 7
Maintain your airspeed. You may have heard that airspeed is life and that’s true, except the AOA evangelist are screaming at their monitors right now. Too often airspeed, or more accurately AOA, is allowed to degrade in a position that doesn’t allow for an adequate recovery.


number 8
Keep your eyes outside. Mid-air collisions are right up there with in-flight fires as being the scariest thing that can happen in an airplane. Just this week another mid-air claimed four lives in Phoenix. Tragic, and maybe unavoidable, but it might have been prevented with eyes outside of the cockpit.

number 9Keep flying the airplane. We ended where we started, flying the airplane is the most important thing you can do. If you have an engine failure, for example, and you try to stretch the glide and stall/spin into the ground versus a controlled landing in the trees, you will get two completely different outcomes. Flying the airplane doesn’t just mean not being distracted, it also means making it stay in your control. Landing upright with a relatively low sink rate is what you are after – no matter the terrain.

by Brent Owens

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Plan Continuation Bias

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I penned an article for General Aviation News this week about a Human Factors condition known as Plan Continuation Bias, we know it as “get-there-itis.”

I thought folks that come here would enjoy it as well. 

Without giving it away, I will say that this human condition is in all of us and I have yet to find any documents that offer any countermeasures. In the article linked above, I take a stab at some commonsense techniques to avoid falling into the trap of the old “get-home-itis” syndrome. 

human factors aviation

So if you are interested, I encourage you to jump over to GA News and check it out. If you have thoughts or if you like it (or hate it), please leave a comment over there or here.

by Brent Owens

Nap of the Earth: Flying low

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Editorial disclaimer: These are my views and opinions alone. Operate at your own risk.

flying low

I recently watched a very popular YouTube video that illustrated the beauty of nap of the Earth flying. The pilot, flying a J-3, is very experienced and very familiar with the area he was flying. Link here: http://youtu.be/X_Kt_CxXxtA

I will go ahead and state for the record, and in spite of my safety-promotional-ways, that I am not opposed to this type of flying, but…

The problem we get into in this day-and-age of viral videos is that some might watch something like this and then immediately feel compelled to emulate it with no thought of the legalities, hazards, or physics involved. In the unlikely event that I produce a low flying video it will have disclaimers all over it so as not to encourage someone to take unnecessary risks.

There are thousands of aviation professionals that make their living flying low all day long so we know it can be done legally and safely.

But, and it’s a big BUT, these folks are trained to do this kind of flying and they generally aren’t carrying innocent bystanders or showing off. The latter two are what have gotten pilots into trouble.

They know the area they are operating so ground-based hazards can be avoided. This is one of the things that almost ended my career before it ever started (article here).

Also, the professionals aren’t down there buzzing friends or family (not legal – see FAR references below), so they avoid the whole stall-spin hazard that folks get into. By the way, the video I watched didn’t have any of that kind of flying, just low n’ slow in a J-3 Cub.

Finally, the professional understands the physics involved with staying out of box canyons or what to do in case of an engine failure.

I’m always amazed that many of the amateur videos show low flying over water. It is spectacular, but if the engine fails and you don’t have enough energy to get to land, it going to be a very bad day. If you are in a fixed gear aircraft you should expect to flip over as soon as the gear touches the water. The sudden stop will probably render you and your passenger unconscious and upside under water. Chances of survival are very low. In fact two people perished in a Cub leaving Oshkosh after ditching in Lake Winnebago with eyewitnesses watching it happen. The Cub wouldn’t have had a lot of energy hitting the water, but with no shoulder harness…well you can figure out the rest.

The regulation (14 CFR 91.119) is clear. 1000′ from person or property or 500′ from person or property in “non-congested” areas. What isn’t as clear is 14 CFR 91.13 Careless and Reckless.  It is so broad that if you have an accident or hurt someone, you can expect that to be added to your list of condemnations. Also, each FAA guy or gal has their own interpretation, so you should go ahead and assume there will be some risk of regulatory entanglement if your low level sortie isn’t carefully scripted and executed (and even then you never know). Worst case someone gets hurt. Note this Stearman pilot in Wisconsin was charged with homicide after striking wires on a low level flight with a passenger - 2007 Aero-News Network article here.

flying low in a J-3 Cub

My intent isn’t to say you can never fly below pattern altitude, nor do I want to scare anyone. My intent is to make sure you have considered all of the risks and how to mitigate them before you do something that you might regret, especially if you are carrying passengers.

Flying low is a polarizing subject, so let’s hear your opinions. Don’t worry, you won’t offend me.

Enjoy the view!

by Brent Owens                                                          Subscribe to this flying blog

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Safety vs. Risk Management

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Safety vs. Risk Management
I am starting to loath the word safety. This term has been carelessly bandied around for years. Talk long enough to a fellow pilot or group of pilots and inevitably it will come up.  The Internet is particularly riff with declarations of safety. Even I admit to hippocratic overuse of the word from time to time.

Why such disdain?

I would argue that if you want safety you should bolt yourself to the couch and never leave your home –  nothing is 100% safe!
I love how folks wrap themselves in the heralded flag of safety with no mind to how safe operations are actually conducted. I am not saying we shouldn’t strive to be safer, I am suggesting we are being too lax by virtue of using an analogous term that is virtually unattainable.
What we should really be discussing is risk management.
Management of risk is really the name of the game. Safe is just the end-state we are trying to achieve.
Example: I decide to set a goal to be happy (or insert the word safe) – that’s just too vague. How are you going to become happy? Or define happy.
Risk management is more targeted. It implies you are dissecting each element of risk within a particular operation and managing that risk. It’s more granular and much more useful than the lofty and generic goal of being ‘safe.’
Risk & Reward
If you manage risk you can make real decisions about how much risk you are willing to accept for a given reward. This philosophy is actionable and at the very least provides the appropriate amount of visibility to the individual components that make up a flight.
A Simplified Definition of Risk Management 
By definition risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks.
The idea is to mitigate risk whenever possible to lower it to an acceptable level. This might even include risk avoidance (scrubbing the flight) – the classic Go/No Go decision.
Check out the risk matrix below courtesy of the FAA via their SMS (Safety Management System) information online. This assessment tool is what many large operators use to manage risks on a daily basis.
risk1
risk2risk3
This doesn’t solve the problem of multiple risks that individually are acceptable, but in totality can spell disaster. Nor does it eliminate the subjectivity in how each person judges risk severity/probability. That’s were Aeronautical Decision Making (ADM) and other tools come into play. We’ll save ADM for another discussion.
Fly safe!
by Brent Owens                                                                Subscribe to the mailing list
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You’ve lost your engine, now what? What to do in the case of an engine failure?

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engine failure and prop stopped

You’ve lost your engine, now what? What to do in the case of an engine failure?
As aviators we know our airplanes are very capable of flying with an engine failure. You will obviously be descending, some airplanes faster than others, but it still flies just fine.

What will you do if this fateful day comes? Have you thought about it? If not this article will encourage you to do just that.

Engine failures are one of the most fiercely trained events in aviation.
This is for good reason. Although our modern aero engines are very reliable, it wasn’t always that way. And even now the engine represents one of the weaker mechanical links in the system.
So you have trained, been quizzed, mentally rehearsed, and simulated engine failures, but are you really prepared? When was the last time you practiced a simulated engine failure? Continue reading →

Reckless Flying

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Reckless Flying

Reckless Flying
With all the emphasis on GA’s accident record, especially the experimental segment, I wanted to discuss “reckless” flying – I put reckless in quotes because it means different things to different people.

Merriam-Webster defines reckless as: marked by a lack of proper caution : careless of consequences.

In my opinion, that definition appropriately frames the issue. It’s also important that we acknowledge the spectrum of reckless behavior that needs to be considered.

Continue reading →

Computer ATC Police: TARP and Pilot Deviations

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Computer ATC Police: TARP and Pilot Deviations
The FAA has a program called Traffic Analysis Review Program (TARP), which relies on an automatic system that monitors pre-established separation parameters and generates alerts when an aircraft approaches the limits of these parameters. Each TARP alert creates an Electronic Occurrence Report (EOR) that is forwarded to an ATO Service Area Safety Office for review. Committees at these safety offices review each EOR and decide if a Pilot Deviation (PD) will be filed. Due to the automation involved, deviations can result without the local ATC’s knowledge.

In addition to TARP, controllers are now required to report any safety-of-flight occurrence they observe using Mandatory Occurrence Reports (MOR). Much like EORs, MORs are forwarded to the Service Area Safety Offices for review. I have heard of controllers being disciplined for not reporting issues that TARP captures. This and the centralization of industry workers tasked with determining whether a PD has occurred has led to an increase in the number and type of PDs reported. Continue reading →

Risk vs Reward: GO/NO GO decision making

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go no go decisionsRisk vs Reward: GO/NO GO decision-making
Every single flight you take is laden with decisions. Most of them are accounted for in regulatory guidance, operating procedures, training, or just common sense. One decision that makes the rest of these decisions go away and stops the error chain is one of the hardest to make – do I cancel today’s flight?

I have faced this many times in my career and it sounds easy enough, but I am always struck by how hard it is to do in practice.

For this discussion, we’ll exclude professional flying. Why? Because there are trips that I would execute in a professional setting that I would never consider in my personal flying (this may not be true for everyone, in every situation). Every professional operation is unique and has its own built-in risk mitigators.

You have heard the term “personal minimums” and generally this is applied to ceiling/visibility to conduct a cross-country flight. It can also be applied to wind. This is an excellent way to ease the burden of a NO GO decision – if you hold to it. Continue reading →

Test Flying: Operational Check Flight

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Test Flying: Operational Check Flight (OCF)
In related articles we talked about test flying your homebuilt aircraft on its first flight. In this post we’ll discuss flight test of certified aircraft, both from a regulatory and a practical standpoint.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
― Benjamin Franklin

The Regulations

91.407 (b) — Operation after maintenance, preventive maintenance, rebuilding, or alteration.

(a) No person may operate any aircraft that has undergone maintenance, preventive maintenance, rebuilding, or alteration unless—

Continue reading →