By Miroslav Nikolich 

It’s always both fascinating and instructive to learn lessons from other branches of aviation. For instance, our regular training guru at Aviator is a fully fledged military trainer and his guidance from the ‘sharp edge’ proves invaluable for those of us coping with less intense but nevertheless critical sitations. Here, we have an experienced transatlantic flyer of the ‘big iron’ discussing the real time difficulties of situational awareness and, as he admits, maintaining SA is more difficult for the single pilot than a professional plot in a multi-crew scenario.

A crucial precursor of ADM (Aeronautical Decision Making) and good judgment, situational awareness (SA) is often quickly defined in textbooks/ops manuals and then assumed to be constantly practiced. Airlines, corporate and other professional flying organizations expect us to unwaveringly possess it– but little practical guidance is given as to how to develop it to a fine edge. For example, my airline in particular places a great premium on SA, expecting us to demonstrate it even after a 17 hour Hong Kong-JFK flight. It is relatively easy to say to a pilot that he/she should exhibit greater SA, that they have lost it, or that they need to pay more attention but such an approach is hardly helpful in the larger scheme of things and, more importantly, usually comes after an unpleasant event (lousy performance, near-accident or busted checkride). As the well-known excuse goes, “I knew exactly where I was when I ran out of fuel.” This article intends to bridge the gap between theory and practice, as well as give you simple tools to identify loss of SA, regain it and make it a constant part of your flying.

DEFINING SA
Let’s start with the definition of SA (this is by no means the only one, but captures the concept) – Perception of surrounding elements in a timely manner, understanding of their implication on the flight and prediction of how they will affect the flight.

No real surprise there, as it all seems self-explanatory and neatly summarized. However, it will be shown that the ingredients of SA as well as the long process of getting them in place is a more complex and thorough undertaking than the simple definition suggests. To expand, SA encompasses at least the following:

• Internal factors - state of pilot, crew and aircraft, autopilot/mode in use, mission objectives
• External factors - weather, ATC influences, other traffic
• Position - now and in the future
• Time - how much is left

These factors may vary in importance and be juggled accordingly but the pilot should have a constant overview of all of them. Furthermore, to really understand how a pilot exhibits and employs SA, we will elaborate on three successively complex stages of SA:

Stage 1) Basic perception of events - what is happening?
Stage 2) Understanding of events - how/why it has happened and what is the nature of the problem?
Stage 3) The use of that understanding to plan ahead.

Let’s use a LOW VOLTAGE abnormal event in a typical single-engine airplane to see how a pilot thinks at each of the three stages of SA.  The LOW VOLTAGE light comes on:
Stage 1: “Uh-oh. LOW VOLTAGE light is on. Can’t be good.”
Stage 2: “Uh-oh. LOW VOLTAGE light is on. Can’t be good. Let’s do the appropriate abnormal checklist. We probably only have 30 minutes of battery power left.”
Stage 3: “Uh-oh. LOW VOLTAGE light is on. Can’t be good. Let’s do the appropriate abnormal checklist. We only have 30 minutes or less of battery power left. We should advise ATC that we will soon lose comm/nav radios, and need vectors to nearest (preferably VFR) airport. Reduce all unnecessary electrical loads. If night time, retrieve flashlight and plan for a dark-cockpit approach and landing. Accomplish pax briefing before intercom power goes out and select desired flap setting (if required) before all power is lost.”

It’s obvious that Stage 3 SA is what really switched-on pilots practice and make it look easy, at that. But developing that ability to multi-task, plan ahead and act competently is not as intuitive or quick as it appears. To say that you will have good SA if you pay attention and think ahead is to oversimplify the issue (as many training handbooks do). The process of making yourself a switched-on, aware pilot who won’t get caught by surprise will take significant self-analysis, study and practice – but is the only way to get to that lofty level of awareness. There are no shortcuts and no easy fixes. The true professional recognizes the complexity of continuously maintaining SA and develops strategies/skills to enable him/her to get to the highest stage of flying awareness. So, if you wanted a more detailed checklist of what’s involved and how to get there, here it is.

Develop the ability to pay attention to the right thing at the right time. It is as easy to say to a student, “pay attention” as it is useless. He/she will only feel admonished and will have learned nothing from your advice. Not only is attention easily diverted, it is often misplaced. What is really helpful is to teach pilots to decide correctly where to direct their attention. And how to teach that? Nothing better than chair-flying scenarios with them (well, doing so in a sim would be better but is usually cost-prohibitive), and explaining workload demands and tasks along the way. The idea is to give them the ability to manage their attention spans, from tasks requiring seconds to accomplish to keeping the big picture of the whole flight in mind. Start from small tasks (asking them at what point they could/should they should attend to the comm/navs and how long before they re-divert their attention to flying the airplane, for example) to asking them at what point they should think about destination weather – and everything in between. If the student focuses too long on something, bring it to their attention and show that other tasks need their attention too (ie. fiddling with sexy avionics at the expense of flying the airplane or monitoring their fuel state). And don’t expect this to sink in quickly – examples will need to be shown and the student will have to go through many scenarios before they develop the ability to constantly manage routine demands in a proactive way.

Paying attention is only the first step – observations must be correctly perceived and interpreted. Sounds obvious (and perhaps could be viewed as important as point number one) but all subsequent actions are useless and possibly even more harmful if one does not have the right understanding of the problem.

One of the most tragic examples of misinterpreted information followed by erroneous action is the famous 1989 British Midland 737-400 accident. During climbout the airplane suffered a right engine failure but the crew, due to rushed/insufficient analysis, shut down the left engine. Immediately after the failure, smoke began to pour into the cockpit which (due to bleed air system configuration on early 737s) was interpreted as proof that the right engine failed, since the right engine normally provided bleed air to the air conditioning system. However, the airplane that day was a newer version of the 737, which had a different bleed air system that fed bleed air from both engines to the air conditioning system. In addition, the crew failed to consult vibration monitors (which would have identified the malfunctioning engine) since they were notoriously unreliable on earlier versions of the 737. The captain attempted to glide to the nearest airport while restarting the right engine but ran out of altitude. The airplane landed short of the runway and impacted an embankment, resulting in 47 fatalities.

Develop the ability to multi-task. Easy - all we have to do is pay attention to several things at the same time and do them simultaneously! While this may come easier to some (women are generally better at multi-tasking than men), it is a complex skill that needs developing. Here’s an example of how multi-tasking increases the complexity of an operation.While pilots can:
- fly and chew gum at the same time (two simultaneous actions), things get progressively trickier if asked to;
- fly, chew gum and read back a clearance (three simultaneous actions); and when a fourth factor is added in,
- fly, chew gum, read back a clearance and analyze a verbal TCAS advisory (four simultaneous actions), the workload starts to become downright untenable.

What multi-tasking really entails is paying snippets of attention to several things in such a rapid-fire cycle that it appears we’re doing them simultaneously. How much time you will have to devote to a task largely depends on your ability to accomplish it, as well as its complexity. There are things you can do to stack the deck in your favor and make the situation more manageable.  We’ll use the most complex, four-task situation above to illustrate what you can do to make life easier, with suggestions how to simplify each one (which leads to simplification of the whole):

fly – this basic task can be made simpler by familiarity with your airplane. Knowing the appropriate pitch/power setting, trimming for a hands-off condition or even better, using the autopilot;
chew gum – delay/eliminate simple, needless distractions. Stick it on your dispatch paperwork and save for later
read back a clearance – could be somewhat tricky, but if you were paying attention AND were not unduly distracted, you should have an easy time reading it all back in a suave, captain voice;
TCAS voice alert – could be any airplane-issued warning, really. The point is to be familiar with your aircraft’s cautions/warnings. For example, if you know the appropriate drill perfectly, it won’t take extra time or brainpower to react. In our example, you will simply know that if it’s a TA (Traffic Advisory), you look for traffic/get ready to manoeuvre. Easy!

Work to enlarge your spare capacity. This is really the key to successful SA when things start going pear-shaped and cockpit lighting takes on shades of amber and red. If you can’t fly the airplane, deal with the issue at hand AND have enough spare capacity to analyze the problem and plan a resolution, you’re little more than a passenger. As we all know, flying the airplane is crucial but not the end of the story. One must (correctly) analyze the situation, often in confusing and time-limited circumstances. It’s not easy but give yourself every chance of success – take your time (or at least don’t jump to conclusions), have a think and be sure you are certain of the nature of the problem at hand. Then (while the plane is on autopilot if you have one), start thinking what to do. This is where spare capacity becomes truly necessary. One must fly the airplane (or at least watch it like a hawk), perform the appropriate checklist and think what to do next. Depending on the nature of the problem it might take all of your capacity to deal with the situation, so the more capacity you have, the better your odds.

Spare capacity is the ability to take on additional mental tasks while already engaged. A most valuable capability, it is the end-result of good SA and technical/operational expertise and can make the difference between successfully handling a major problem – or not. Especially with this desirable capability, there is no shortcut and it takes longest to develop. Required spare capacity is best illustrated in military single-pilot tactical flying, and is acquired through practice, practice and more practice.

Imagine you’re tooling along low-level, dodging pesky hills and power lines, navigating using a chart and monitoring your time-to-target progress, trying to figure out whether you’re behind/ahead of schedule. Overloaded wouldn’t begin to describe it, but you’re successfully multi-tasking and have the situation well in hand. And then, your radar warning lights up since you’ve obviously attracted unwanted attention – now you have to figure out, and quickly, what kind of threat it is and how to deal with it. And then, you notice, after going into afterburner in order to run away, your fuel state is worse than planned. Not to mention that during your evasive maneuvers you managed to get off-route and nothing looks like what’s on your chart…

An example of a hypothetical bad day which is going to get worse unless you have spare capacity to deal with it all. Spare capacity which came about thanks to an in-depth development of all the ingredients, followed by their integration during training flights of gradually increasing complexity, demonstrated and improved on every mission. Spare capacity is something that comes with time, repetition and familiarity with your operation.

LOSING SA
When you’re not the person in the hot seat, it’s easy to notice someone is losing SA. Noticing it when you’re by yourself is not as easy. These are some of the symptoms that indicate something’s starting to go amiss.

Signs that SA is being lost at Stage 1 are:
i) narrowing focus - (ie., tunnel vision during an ILS approach, where all that is looked at is the Primary Flight Display, to the detriment of other inputs), especially when overloaded. This is an easy trap to fall into and happens to a greater extent with increasing workload. At out airline, we call out passing altitudes every 5000’ on the descent, precisely so that we could detect a loss of SA. If SA is being lost, these callouts are usually the first things that will be omitted by the pilot.
ii) complacent/lazy behaviour – maybe the pilot is really being lazy, or just slow to pick up on the clues around him, taking his time assembling the mental picture. Either way, appropriate attention is not being paid.
iii) acting distracted – reaching for a switch, then pulling his hand back or looking harried/unsure. If making a radio call, a pause or a correction. Confusing or contradictory statements. Not following SOPs. When a pilot is distracted and unsure of his actions, these will be the symptoms.

Signs that SA is being lost at Stage 2 are:
i) incorrect analysis of the problem – possible due to interpretation problems (Stage 1) or insufficient knowledge/experience.
ii) inability to move beyond Stage 1 – the pilot sees something went wrong (good detection) but then seems unable to put it in context and doesn’t grasp the full implication. Using a variation of our LOW VOLTAGE example, the problem was correctly analyzed, the checklist was done but there is a lack of urgency to decide what to do next.

Signs that SA is being lost at Stage 3 are:
i) lack of updating – while an emergency may have been dealt with successfully and a plan was thought out and implemented to deal with it, a new change goes unnoticed or unincorporated. It is crucial that the analysis and revision process never stops – your plan is only as good as the circumstances it was based on.

REGAINING  SA
Chances are we all have lost SA at some point and just as likely to lose it again – we’re only human. There is no shame in feeling overloaded, out of the loop or harried. In fact, it is beneficial to feel these symptoms as they are a warning sign that the situation is slipping beyond our grasp - and we should do something about it.

Once you have come to the realization that you’re not as aware as you should be (you’re aware that you’re not aware, if you will, existentially), breathe a (little) sigh of relief that you caught the situation before it got out of hand. Then do everything you can to assemble the overall picture and get a sense of what’s going on. So, where to start?

Chances are you were overloaded to begin with. If you can, reduce or delegate the workload. When your mom told you, “…not to put off anything for tomorrow that you can do today”, she was actually incorrect when talking about a hectic cockpit. DO put off non-essential duties till later. Have the first officer (or the autopilot) do the flying while you tackle the problem at hand. Have ATC vector you or give you miles to the airport rather than figure it out yourself. Ask ATC for ATIS rather than tune and listen yourself on the #2 comm, etc.
Give yourself more time – assuming you’re not on fire or otherwise pressed for time, don’t let ATC or anyone rush you as you methodically go through your procedures and formulate a plan. Have ATC give you delaying vectors, bring your speed back, etc. Have an idea of how much time you’re working with, i.e. how long will all the procedures take to accomplish, how much fuel do we have until we have to land (how much fuel do I want to land with?), and how long to get to the airport?

Follow rules and SOPs – if you’re slipped up, go back to the written word. SOPs are crucial for a constant, predictable and safe operation.

Finally, expand your span of attention and look at the big picture – once you’ve regained a grasp of the immediate situation, relax a bit and take it all in. Seek more and more info on your surrounding events and environment. When you’re back to feeling in control, evaluate and update your plan, if needed.

If you apply these strategies on every flight, you will see a gradual increase in SA. This will further enhance your multi-tasking abilities, which (in time) lead to greater spare capacity. And having more spare capacity will enable you to pay more attention to more things, enhancing your SA, in a constant, circular process – like one big, beneficial snowball, which makes your flying safer and safer! And the more you feel safe and in control, the less surprises you have to worry about, and the more relaxed you can be – and THAT ultimately means having more fun with your flying!