Loss of situational awareness is a fundamental component of controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), the accident category that is more likely to be fatal than any other, according to years of data from all aviation sectors.
NetJets' Patrick Veillette, in a presentation to the Flight Safety Foundation's April Commercial Aviation Safety Seminar in Tucson, Arizona, says there are detectable signs of loss of situational awareness for those trained to see them. This is vital because the danger comes from an inability to recognise that there is a problem, or at least to identify what the problem is. The signs include:
ambiguity: the inability to resolve logically a discrepancy between two sources of information. Veillette says: "Bar none, this is the best indication of a loss of situational awareness. The ambiguities could be between the pilot and co-pilot, between the crew and air traffic control, between two instruments, or between a plan and actuality." fixation on a task: this can be the result of trying to rationalise ambiguities; gut feeling: Veillette says that although this sounds unscientific, "the nagging feeling that something is not quite right is often unfailing in its precision. It is an easy feeling to ignore because there is no specific course of action suggested, just an uncomfortable feeling that something is amiss."Veillette observes that in the investigation of CFIT accidents, "an examination of cockpit voice recorder transcripts often reveals that there were misgivings on the part of one or more of the crew members."
He also notes that there are examples of situations in which a crew member was actually aware of danger but failed to communicate it to the rest of the crew, and advises: "It is imperative that flightcrews learn not only to identify the signs of a loss of situational awareness, but also to communicate those concerns to the rest of the crew." Even in the event of restiveness based on "gut feeling" it is better to abandon an approach than continue it if the uncertainty remains, because it is this effect that can lead to fixation on attempts to resolve a "problem" that has not yet been accurately identified.
Veillette says that United Airlines and NetJets have an awareness programme in their crew-resource management training. This aims to make it easier for the co-pilot to challenge the captain's situational awareness by communicating the perceived problem using a phrase containing the key word "unsafe" or "uncomfortable", and the captain is trained to take the challenge seriously.
Source: Flight International
