Proficiency: Bad behavior

It also identified five attitudes found over and over again in poor judgment chains and accidents, described as anti-authority (Don’t tell me), impulsivity (Do something quickly), invulnerability (It won’t happen to me), macho (I can do it), and resignation (What’s the use?). For each dangerous attitude, pilots were instructed to think or say a specific sentence to themselves, as an “antidote.” The study found that this procedure improved pilot performance over time, and reduced hazardous patterns that led to bad decisions. It was triumphantly published, became part of the human factors curriculum, and the FAA left it at that.

In two and a half decades, nothing about it has changed, not even the words. The AC material is printed in the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, in every pilot textbook from student to CFI, and in airman certification standards—in many of these, the original language is copied verbatim.

Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t work for general aviation. Once read, it is usually pushed aside while pilots pursue more tangible skills. Even if a vigilant pilot wanted to research the complexities of attitude further, where can you go for greater understanding when our training hasn’t advanced since the 1990s? Two problems have to be solved before knowledge of hazardous attitudes can make us safer pilots: The prescribed procedure doesn’t work well in the GA cockpit, and standard teaching of hazardous attitudes is ineffective.

“Identify the thought as hazardous and apply the appropriate antidote” is the core of attitude training, and one reason it isn’t used much in GA could be the key to improving it. Reading the original advisory circular, there is a strong implication that this procedure was developed and proven in the learning environment. Human performance researchers are identifying a “learning zone” and a “performance zone,” and showing how they have different goals, different requirements, and different applications in life.

In flying, they are fairly easy to grasp—when we are getting initial training or a flight review, the circumstances and goals of the flight usually are very different than our everyday flying will be post-certificate. In flying’s learning zone—primarily dual instruction—the focus is on improving skills, going out of comfort zones, and simulating rare and unexpected events, all with the benefit of another experienced aviator providing backup and perspective. In the performance zone we are focused on executing plans, demonstrating skills, and minimizing mistakes, such as quickly getting to the next airport for the $100 hamburger and touching down on the numbers.

The hazardous attitude assessment procedure demands that we step back from ourselves and consider our thoughts, critically asking if we are unconsciously showing a bias toward bad decisions. There are so many reasons why a pilot would fail to use this procedure: Self-reflection can be uncomfortable and demanding; few people want to identify something about themselves or their behavior as wrong; objectivity about yourself is extremely hard to achieve; and we may simply be too busy flying the airplane. In a multi-pilot cockpit, one pilot could provide feedback to the other if questionable attitudes and decisions start developing, but asking the single pilot to be both the actor and the evaluator seems like an unrealistic burden. The thought-antidote procedure could work well with an objective observer acting as a coach, but the only way it could translate outside the learning zone is if it were so deeply integrated and practiced as to become automatic. If the majority of our flying hours happen in the performance zone, then the flights when we would most need this procedure would be the times we would be least likely to use it.

So, if the procedure for handling hazardous attitudes isn’t really being used, and the tools available don’t really adapt to who you are, what do we do? The uncomfortable answer is that there may not be one perfect solution. There may not be one procedure that we can teach, and test, and apply, and go forth confident that we will always get it right. Human factors are messy, and don’t lend themselves to assessment and improvement as easily as concrete skills. It is easier to know if your landings have improved over time more than your judgment, so it is no wonder that pilots choose to focus on things they can grasp and measure.

Psychological concepts such as personality, attitude, and self-awareness are hard enough to grasp on the ground, let alone in the air, so our best approach to hazardous attitudes is to revisit what the information was intended to do and why it is important. The most measurable gauge of any new development will be to see how well it accomplishes the original goal.

Hazardous attitudes were made part of the aviation lexicon the same way we identified not using checklists and captains silencing junior officers: We figured out they were crashing airplanes. Attitude is only one part of the decision-making study, with the point that factors such as attitude have a major impact on judgment—especially when they remain unconscious, and especially when under stress. The five identified attitudes consistently led to poorer decisions that could accumulate into accidents, and the pilots involved never saw it happening. Attitude training was intended to give us the tools to save us from ourselves. So many procedures were developed because of the requirements of the aircraft and the flight environment; this may be one of the few times in aviation where the optimal procedure is not standardized, but customized.

Each pilot has different desires in flying, brings different skills to the table, and develops differently over their flying career. Even in one individual, the complex interaction of attitude (which can change) with personality (which probably won’t) is likely to vary with time and experience. But the one thing that remains consistent is that attitude manifests in behavior. It is the why behind the what—something the original study got dead right. So, each of us can gain deeper insight into our own flying: We don’t have to start with probing who we are, or what lurks in the unconscious; we just have to look at what we do and start to consider why. Attitude will either make you a better pilot or it will stop you from advancing, and what it takes to move from one to the other may be completely unique to you.

If the last time you thought about hazardous attitudes was prepping for an exam, then any amount of time spent reflecting on what kind of pilot you are will be beneficial, even the time you have taken to read this. What, for example, would be a good attitude in flying? We have seen how bad attitudes lead to wrong decisions, and we focus a lot on a culture of safety, but we haven’t yet identified if there is a consistent attitude among the best pilots that we could all learn from. Could we overcome hazardous attitudes altogether by identifying an attitude, set of beliefs, or approach that is optimal for flight?

Here is an idea to get started: Go back to the origin of attitude training—the learning zone—and develop your own ways to incorporate it into your flying. For example:

• Make it part of your debrief, or even briefing. Instructors say that the best learning happens on the drive home, when the pilot thinks back over the flight in a relaxed setting and integrates his or her experiences. Think about the good decisions you made, the decisions you were less comfortable with, and ask yourself what reasons you had for each.
• Enrich your hangar flying. Assess other pilots’ stories or NTSB reports in terms of motivation, and look for attitudes revealing themselves in behavior. Is there anyone at the airport you aren’t comfortable letting your family fly with? Why? It probably runs deeper than their flying technique.
• Get a coach. Everyone gets some kind of recurrent training—a flight review at minimum. The best pilots get more frequent sessions with a CFI, or even the perspective of another trusted aviator riding along. Ask for a candid assessment—do they see something that you don’t, patterns or habits that you are overlooking? And be prepared for an answer you don’t like; improving isn’t easy.

If attitude is important enough to teach in the first place, it is important enough to improve. And the advisory circular that gave us aeronautical decision making made us better instructors and better pilots. Let’s keep advancing it.

Valérie Thibodaux is an art crime researcher, private pilot, and advanced ground instructor living in Oregon.