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OSTIV TSP - Startseite

STOP CHRASHING
Introducion
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

STOP CHRASHING

Part 3

Flying Safety and the Pilot

Many single factors govern the decisions made by pilots in the air. Pilots react to upcoming situations differently due to a multitude of personal resources, primarily based on sozialisation processes at earlier stages of their lives. These are cultural implications inflecting the standard procedure of formal training, we should try to estimate their strenght to make it easier to understand the behaviour of glider pilots.

Why are we starting to fly?

The conditions behind the option of gliding, compared with golf or sailing or any other activity are of prime interest.

Show overhead 1.

This curve provides a picture of conditions behind a person´s decision to start gliding.  Every individual has made a personal choice. When looking closer, we will find certain ideas supporting the decision to start gliding. Their interest in gliding is personal, they have made the decision by themselves. It reflects a psychological process linked with their personality; it is an ego-expression of feelings, which is hardly transferable to anybody else. When showing up at an airfield to join a course, some students are totally convinced that they found a home for their feelings since early childhood, while other combine the image of gliding with “self-realization“. The complexity of perceptions reflects a common view: We are individuals.

Since earlier phases of our lives we have been trained for life by our parents, schools, works and settlement. We have not only learned to respect the law and certain rules for social life, but also a personal ethic. We have been trained differently to solve problems or recognize risks. Deeply rooted ideas of challenge, risk-taking or even the boredom of routines, vary from culture to culture. When attempting to understand the phenomena of good behaviour in everyday life there is a concept, “personal judgement“, to go on with.

What is judgement?

We usually epitomize the polarization between good or bad judgement in stone-cut letters.

Question, what is judgement?

Good judgement might be regarded as responsiveness; for receiving and evaluating information of all kind and to make good decisions.

Judgement is both an act of realization and a process, a complex mental activity. Often we simplify the processes of thinking, with references to the pilot´s attitudes and subjective reality making. Things are not always that easy. We may perceive judgement as an act of realization. It is the extension of a pilot's gathering and processing of information, directed by his interpretation of the situation; where he finds himself and the personal will/capacity to alter the situation and make improvements.

Persons who find it difficult to gather and process information, to act and decide, or to perceive realities the way they are, might be those who:

Show overhead 2.

-always want to be the leading characters when something happens

-suddenly behave themselves irrationally and unexpectedly

-appears to be energetic, over-stimulated

-feel that nobody like them and will understand their breaking of the rules

-sometimes have financial debts to the club

-sometimes are they involved in traffic incidents

-part and depart, they move from one club to another

Looking at the list of arguments it is easier to understand why the pattern of behaviour is combined with a false reality making. Let's look at these examples 

A pilot takes his place in a queue to get launched by a winch and intend to bring a passenger with him.

An instructor standing at the starting area feel a growing doubt about the knowledge of the pilot and asks:“— Are you going to start by winch?“

The pilot answers: “Yes!“

Instructor: “Have you started by winch before?“

Pilot: “Of course I have.“

Instructor: “May I see your log book?“

Pilot: “It is in my car.“

Instructor: “Which instructor gave you the lessons?“

Pilot: (names an instructor, here we can call him I 2)

A talk with I 2 showed that the pilot only had flown with him as a passenger. He was not allowed to control the machine during those flights. Despite this fact, he considered himself being prepared to take-off by winch and had no idea of offend against a rule.

Question: Can anything be done to change a pilots judgement? Or, can we change his or her reality making?

Reality making — personal judgement will always be influenced by  training improvements, information and a better follow up of the pilots' skills.

Attitudes

We often mention attitudes to gliding is a critical factor. According to the ideas we have been discussing, there are pilots with both positive and negative attitudes towards gliding.

Show overhead 3.

Signs of a positive attitude towards gliding might be such as:

-accepting the rules

-exposing oneself to few and only limited risks

-taking time for planning for the flight

-joining the gang, for positive work for the club

Signs of a negative attitude might be noticed contrarily as:

-slight or limited concern of principles, rules and order

-ability to maximize a personal self-interest of advantages, and the machine´s capacity.

-imaging the club committee as a “gathering of idiots“.

-taking risks through a lottery like competitive flying pattern, to make “great“ results

-carelessness in relation to fellow pilots, demonstrated in many ways, for example by exceeding time limits for club flights.

A typical bad relation to gliding might be this:

A very experienced air show pilot (power) demonstrates inverted flying below 10 metres of height. He completes this part of the show repeatedly many times until finally the wing tip hits the ground and he is killed.  

Question: Why are attitudes so different?

Some elements of our attitudes derive from early experiences during the initial phases of our lives, some are added from training and meeting with club officials. 

Question: Is it possible to design a pilot´s attitude?

Attitudes are always stimulated, strengthened, confirmed or even consciously ignored, by filtering the information. The most effective way of giving information is direct communication, through face-to-face contact.

Learning to know the other and making friends seems like a good option. Falling back on friendship a message is much easier to communicate, a correction easier made if something goes wrong.

Show over head 4. Socializing.

Comments:

Drinking together must not be the only essential content of social gathering! The point is, there must be a corner for talk and relaxation in a healthy club.

Never accept the existence of a “lonely wolf“; The person who never says anything, and packs his stuff before giving himself some minutes for a cup of coffee, leaving the site in a dust cloud. He or she is a potential flying accident, a risk…

Show overhead 5. False assistance.

As we already have seen the complexity behind bad attitudes depends on a shortage of training and competence, and presumably misinterpretation of trained skills.

For better understanding, let us look at one of the substantial parts of knowledge — experience.

The sentence “I didn´t know“ says the pilot might be recognized by his failing capacity to control the glider,  which has much to do with an over-all lacking competence to fly gliders.

Show overhead 6. I didn´t know

Every pilot will face situations which are difficult to control due to a shortage of experience. The most important issue is to be fully aware of one´s limits, even if pilots with a long experience tend to limit their explanations — I didn´t know. Pilots with only limited air experience will on the other hand, more often declare that they actually didn´t know.

To explore the connections between consciousness-awareness-attitudes-reality, the following example will be clarifying:

Show overhead 7.

Joe. (pilot)

Joe has been competing in the nationals during the latest 15 years and usually he belongs to the upper half of the runners. He is not approved to aerobatic but his certificate includes instrument flying because he joined a course in the 70´more by routine than conviction. There is also another addition to his certificate which approves him to fly motorgliders, which he occasionally does with his family. 

Joe has learned his own version of a final glide. It is a glide of 50 km and knows exactly the required height at different position, he reaches the forest at 150 m, it wouldn´t be bad to have some more, but he knows there is still a marginal.

Joe is a safe pilot but sometimes his way of final gliding looks hair-raising.  

Peter. (technician)

Peter has competed only some few years. He has never been strong enough to stand a gliding competition. He is the pilot who will win some days and being the first to give up and land other days. Following his ideas, aerobatic flying is too simple and not really a challenge, he avoids motorgliding and finds cloud flying more interesting but only when it comes to real Cb.

Peter perceives his consumption of height in a similar way as Joe, but the difference is that he will reach the forest at 90 m due to his calculations: there is a lift to use when following the hill and, of course, plenty of redundant speed to take into account.  

Peter is creating a risk!

Jim. (neutral)

The flying path of Jim is based on the following calculation: He will descend 110 m while his actual consumption is 140 m. Still, he adds a marginal and comes over the forest edge at 200 m. His impression is that he comes too low and therefore he reduces the airspeed.

Jim is within the risk zone!

George. (beginner) 

He is a rather inexperienced cross-country pilot, a newcomer. His actual consumption of height is 150 m while he believes it is 100 m. George adds a margin for safety of 200 m. Then he decides to establish his final glide from 300 m over the forest, but his impression is that he is flying at a dangerous low level, so he changes his solution and enters the glide at 400 m.

George is a safe pilot.

Ben. (weak)

He finds it troublesome to consider what the real options are. The loss of height is hardly predictable because nobody knows what sort of manoeuvres he will add to the glide. He doesn´t know himself and has no idea about the required height. He looks at the other pilots and tells himself “if they can do it, I can“. If he ever reaches his goal depends on the pilot he will follow.  

Ben is a fatal risk!

Are there special elements of decision making to be considered?

The decision of flying or cancelling a task on a certain day, in a specific situation, is rather complex. First, we may recognize a compound set of factors affecting the solution and we could call them pre-decisions. These preconditions might be controlled or not, depending on the pilot and his experience:

-a longing to get up into the air.

-a strong will to re-vitalize the positive impressions of successful, previous flying

Sometimes the counter force of doubts comprises

-bad weather

-something wrong with the machine, or any detail in the whole situation that doesn´t work the way we were taught during basic training.

Initially,there are not so many factors to be considered, because the pilot simply doesn´t know about their existence. His experience is always limited.

When trying to understand the complicated solutions, made by pilots with their personal resources in mind, even the social structure of clubs influences the way people act, the responsibility of club officials may not be excluded. When trying to sort out the predominating forces of psychological factors we may consider the following suggestions for further understanding.

Show overhead 8.

Comments:

-Prestige: Spot landing close to the trailer, tow release at a low level.

-Suppression: “I didn´t follow the preflight check in every detail“

-Rationality (Improvised large decisions far too complicated in comparison with the pilots actual stand): “It will do! Everything will be fine“

-Competitions: A certain demand for rapid decisions and analyzing of realities.   

We may refer to some well-known, predictable accidents which are directly related to outer circumstances:

As we know, the word “lemon“ stands for many things: pale yellow acid fruit, useless person or thing. Add a certain pale coloured “Lemon“-accidents.

Show overhead 9.

This is a special category of accidents that often occur in the vicinity of the airfield. These crashes are obviously related to stressed pilots, insufficiently controlling their own steps. The typical situation is the pilot who has been told that he is not allowed to make any field landings yet. Otherwise he is offending a club rule which says he is not approved for cross country flying, or even worse  — abandoning outlandings. Sometimes the pilot knows there is no car trailer available to retrieve the machine. To summarize, the rules of the club, holy principles, psychological and even material factors in combine, are almost regularly creating danger.

For discussion: What kind of improvements are in sight?

The positive answer is simply:

-get a trailer

-spread the message that a field landing is something normal, to counter the comprehensive de-rigging work (which is the committee of quiche-eaters' view).

-speak with the pilot and commend successful field landings