TINA SRIVASTAVA: So we're going
to dive into human factors. There are kind of
two halves to it. So about halfway through
we'll take a break. But let's just do
the first half of it now, because I don't want to
run over into Mark's upcoming talk at 4:00. So human factors
is something that's kind of near and dear to me. I actually really
like this subject. When I was an undergrad,
I took the course 16.400. I really strongly recommend it. We can only cover a
very small amount today. You know, I have
less than an hour to get through all
of this for you. But I think it's really
an interesting class, and it's very pertinent
to everything related to aircraft and aerodynamics. And this class 16.400 was
one of my favorite classes. Still today, I refer back to it. And one of the things
we did was also go through different
NTSB reports. So I gave a link there as well. And you can read through
accident investigations. And not all of them are scary. You know, many of these reports,
nobody actually got injured. But it's good to just read
through what happened. What was the decision making? What led to the issue? It's a really
interesting exercise. And one thing in particular that
we did in that course, 16.400, was really interesting is that
they have you be on basically a flight simulator. So you're pretending
to be a pilot. And then there's
all kinds of inputs coming into you,
which is really what you're going to experience in
the cockpit when you're flying. You know, you've got people
talking to you on the radio. You have your passengers
inside the plane. You have all kinds of inputs
coming up on the screen. You're looking for
other aircraft. You're trying to
identify an airport that you're coming up on. There's a lot happening,
a lot of information. And then we had to basically
talk about if a light went out, the absence of a light, trying
to expect a pilot to identify that is totally unreasonable. So it was really interesting. And taking this course as
an aerospace engineering student at MIT
the lesson was you need to design these
things to be better, because if you engineered
this system such that somebody under that much stress and
looking at those many inputs were supposed to notice
a light going out, that's totally unreasonable. Now, on the other hand,
talking about a pilot, we will talk a little
bit about how many inputs are on a person with a
pilot, how a lot of things are attributed to pilot error. The whole purpose of this
course and the whole purpose of learning to fly is how you
can minimize the pilot error aspect, not the
engineering design aspect. But certainly, it's good
to experience both sides, designing the aircraft
and the avionics, as well as flying the aircraft. So one thing I really want to
point out-- it's little bit morbid, but I just want
to talk about accidents and what causes them. Well, a very large
number of accidents are what's called controlled
flight into terrain. Does anyone know what controlled
flight into terrain means? AUDIENCE: There's no instrument
error or adverse weather, but mostly human error
that would be playing into [INAUDIBLE] something. TINA SRIVASTAVA:
Yeah, so what he said was that there's no instrument
error and it's pilot error. So it's not necessarily that
it means that it's pilot error. But what it's saying is that
there's nothing physically wrong with the aircraft. So it's not that
the engine broke. It's not like the case
with Captain Sully where birds were
ingested into the engines and the engine stopped working. But it is the case that a
fully functional aircraft was flown into terrain, into a
mountain, or into the ground. So why does that happen? So as we just heard,
it's the pilot's fault is one of the most
common answers. They attribute things
to pilot error. And the NTSB does this a lot. If you watch the movie
about Captain Sully, it made it seem like the NTSB
was out to get him as well. I've heard the reality is
that they were much more friendly towards him. But the situation is that
that's kind of a natural thing that they have to explore. They ultimately found
that he wasn't at fault, but that becomes a big issue. So I don't think that it's
always the case, again, that it's pilot error. Please take 16.400
and look into that. But for the purposes of this
class, for being a pilot, you need to be aware
of all the things that are under your control. How do you get a really
good weather briefing? How do you make sure
you're prepared, so that it is not your fault and
you don't have any accidents? So just to get you in the
zone for the types of things we're going to discuss today,
here's a practice question. I just want to see where
people are on this. I know I haven't taught
it yet, but I just want to know what you
think the answer is so I know how much time
to spend on these topics in the next couple slides. I'll give you a
chance to read it. OK, so how many
people think it's A? All right, how many
people think it's B? We had movement on B, but nobody
fully raised the arm on B. All right, C? Lot of hands raised on C.
All right, how about D? Now that everybody
raise their hands on C, almost no one wants
to admit D. All right, so it is, in fact,
spatial disorientation. So we're going to talk about the
first half aeromedical factors. And then we'll take a break. And then we'll get into the
aeronautical decision-making. All right, so
aeromedical factors, so Philip has already
talked about some of the regulations
associated with getting your medical certificate and
having an EMT or an aviation medical examiner
basically check you out. So there are a lot of
physiological factors that can affect a pilot. And some of those you know are
unrelated to that medical exam that can happen to any of us. So we're going to go through
the ones that are listed here. So hypoxia, it
basically is related to not having enough
oxygen, or having a reduced amount of oxygen.
And there are a lot of different types of hypoxia. And it results in a
lot of disorientation. A lot of things that you
would be able to do normally, you won't be able to do in
those types of conditions. So impaired judgment, visual
impairment drowsiness, a lot of issues can happen if
you're under that situation. So let's see if we've
got this video going. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] - And as you feel your
symptoms, go ahead and list what they are. - Six of spades. Six of spades. No symptoms yet. TINA SRIVASTAVA: He's
taking off his mask. So he doesn't have the oxygen. - Two of hearts. - Do you have any
of air [INAUDIBLE] - I think I have tinkling in
my toes, in my toes, in my... - What was the last question? - What was the last card? - Four of spades. Tingling in the toes right now. - [INAUDIBLE] TINA SRIVASTAVA: So if you
heard what he just said, he's feeling tinkling in his
toes, tingling in his toes. - Four of spades. - What are you symptoms. - Four-- Four of spades. Four of spades. - What are your symptoms? - What are you
feeling right now, 14? - Five of spades,
five of spades. - Good. [INAUDIBLE] - What do you feel, Sir? - Four of spades. Four of spades. - What's your symptoms, sir? - What are you feeling, 14? - Four-- four of
spades, four of spades. - What's your symptoms, sir? - Four of spades, four
of spades right now. - Where did you get the
card that you're looking at. What card is that? - This is four of spades. - [INAUDIBLE] - Four of spades,
four of spades. [END PLAYBACK] TINA SRIVASTAVA: I'll let
you watch the whole thing. It basically just
gets a lot worse. But you can see-- and one of the biggest
problems is also maybe not being able to realize
that there is a problem. So that's what makes it
even more of an issue. Another issue is carbon
monoxide poisoning. So this can actually
happen in the aircraft that you fly just based on
where the heat comes in. And you get
headache, drowsiness, a lot of issues
there, blurred vision. The way to detect
that is there's actually a CO detector, a
carbon monoxide detector, inside the aircraft. And so when that middle
part becomes very dark, then you'll know that
there's an issue. And so it's good to know
what the symptoms are. So if you're starting to
experience those symptoms, you know what the problem is. And you can, for
example, open your window to get some fresh air
into the aircraft. Some aircraft, even
certain Cirruses have supplemental oxygen. So
you can use that as an option as well. There's another video. Just for time, I'm not
going to go through it. But there's a lot of issues
associated with high G-force. And you might have seen some
things with the Top Gun, which we heard from Laz is a
terrible representation. But even on that
one, when they're pulling high-G maneuvers, we've
seen loss of consciousness and other issues. Another one that you might
have actually heard of this before is hyperventilation. Some people here on the
ground experience this. And so you might just be over
anxious, breathing too quickly. It makes you not be able
to breathe properly. You might need to just
sort of take a break, breathe into a bag. Another good reason to
have a co-pilot with you. So a lot of the issues in terms
of the disorientation that you face are somehow related to
how your inner ear works. So the fluid in your inner
ear is sort of related to how you feel motion. So I won't get into the details. You don't actually have to
know a ton of detail about it. But one thing to know in
terms of how you feel motion is that you have fluid
moving in your ear canal. You can't actually
really detect the fluid. What happens is you have these
little hairs that come up. And so when the fluid
changes direction-- so let's say that the
fluid starts moving in a particular direction. Then all these hair
pieces start moving, and so you feel that motion. Now, the fluid can continue
to move in that direction. But over time,
the hair follicles will basically resume
where they are. They won't feel
motion occurring. Or they'll basically
be stagnant. So it could be the case
that the fluid is moving, and the hair is
sitting like this. Now, all of a sudden, when
the fluid stops moving, the hair tries to just
return to its previous state. And when that happens,
you might actually think that you've started
moving in the other direction. So this is an issue
where, basically, if you are flying along
and you start turning and you're in a
constant rate turn, you might start feeling
like you're not turning. And then, when you come out
of that turn-- so you roll out and now you're straight
and level again, you feel like you have just
started turning to the right. So even though now you're
flying straight and level, your ear is telling you that
you've turned to the right. And so you tried to correct that
by turning back to the left. So it might be the case that
your airplane's actual motion was constant rate turned to the
left and then it flattened out, but you don't
realize you're flat. So you start turning again. So these are reasons
why you don't want to rely on your inner ear. People refer to it as flying
by the seat of your pants-- basically, what
you feel as opposed to looking at the instruments. But actually, the
seat of your pants is primarily your inner
ear is what's giving you all these indications. So there's a lot
of things that can contribute to disorientation. So we already
talked a little bit about spatial disorientation. Well, there are a lot
of things that-- we talked about the
vestibular system, which is that inner ear. But also even visual
cues can cause you to have spatial
disorientation, and then the feeling on your
skin, so, you know, how much you're pressuring
against the seat, for example. So one thing about
spatial disorientation is that when you're flying and
you're looking out the window, your eyes are a big part
of your orientation. So you're looking
at the horizon, and if the horizon is tilted,
you think you're turning. That's how you determine
what's going on. But there are a
lot of false cues you can get from
looking outside. So one thing is that-- and we spent a little bit of
time talking about IFR flight earlier today, where you
can't see outside the airplane and you're just relying
on your instruments. Well, it's also good
to do a reference check of your instruments
because of some of the tricks your eyes can play on you. So, for example, if there
is a low cloud layer that's kind of tilted, the
horizon might look tilted and may not look flat. And you might think you're
tilted when you're flat. Or you might think you're
flat when you're tilted. There is also other-- because of the motion in your
inner ear when you actually have a motion in one direction,
if you actually turn over, if you bend your head down,
so let's say you're writing with a pencil
while you're flying and you dropped your pencil,
well, when you bend down, you actually feel emotions
that don't actually exist. You might think you're
sort of tumbling. And so that's really not good. Actually, if you
fly out of Hanscom, you have to wear a badge anyway. And so you have a lanyard. Maybe you clip your
pencil to that lanyard or do whatever you
can such that you can reach everything you need
to reach without physically bending over. Or if you have a
co-pilot that is also could be a pilot in
command or safety pilot, you can ask them
to take control. And we talked about positive
exchange of controls. Ask them to take
control of the aircraft before you reach down
to pick up something, because it can have a more
significant effect than you think it will. And I will reserve some of
the aerobatic talk for Mark to discuss some of these
with you in more detail. PHILIP GREENSPUN:
Tina was talking trash about the autopilot. But that's also a good
argument for if you have to bend down and
get something, take your hands off the
controls completely, that's better than leaving them on
while you're fishing around for something. And if you have an
autopilot, yet better. TINA SRIVASTAVA: I think the
autopilot is a very important tool to use when you're flying. I was just cautioning
against it-- again, when I was flying on my
check ride with Mark up there, mysteriously, the
autopilot stopped working. And I had to perform
everything without it. So you can't rely on that. When you're flying,
it could stop working. But also your check ride pilot
will not let you use one. So this is something
once you're flying, and you can even
ask your instructor to help you with
that, to actually get a sense of these
disorientation, you can try you know climbing
while accelerating, climbing while turning, these
different types of motions, and also consider
moving your head, making sure the other person
has the flight controls to experience some
of these motions. Or if you like,
over near, I think, Building 33 or Building
35, they have a centrifuge, and you can experience a
lot of these things as well. So how do you deal with
all these disorientation that are happening? One is just being aware of
the causes of them help, making sure you know
that they're there, getting briefings in advance
so you know what's happening. And, really, try to avoid
sudden head movements when you're flying. So we've talked about scanning
and looking for traffic, but avoid very sudden head
movements while you're flying, because you are moving. And it can cause you to
have a lot of effects. And then the other thing
is just being well rested, eating properly. If you're hungry,
if you're tired, your body is not at its best. It can also contribute. So here are just
some more examples of the visual illusions. And then there are
also times when the visual illusions are worse. So nighttime, we're going to
have a whole section of night flying tomorrow. But as it relates
to human factors, I will say that you might
think you're coming in towards the airport,
but you're actually seeing a cluster of lights
that's a city somewhere else. You might start going
to the wrong place. If you don't keep
referencing your instruments, you might not notice that
you're kind of off track. I'll give you one tip, though. I was flying to Hyannis. Hyannis is a city right
at the base of the Cape before you go all the way
down the arm of the Cape. And there's a great
restaurant there right next to the Hyannis airport, a
little French restaurant. During the day, they have
kind of little sandwiches and pastries. And at night, it becomes kind
of a nicer French restaurant. So I was actually
flying there at night. And coming into Hyannis, I was
having a little bit of issue because my heading
indicator kept processing and I wasn't sure exactly-- and things happened
very quickly, because I'd been talking
about the Bravo clearance, because going from
Bedford over there, you're talking to
all these controllers and worrying about
your altitude. And so there's a lot happening. And as I got close to
the Hyannis airport, I wasn't exactly sure that I was
going for the-- they have two different intersecting runways. I wasn't exactly
sure I was lined up for the correct runway. So I just talked to
the tower controller. And I told them that I
was having this issue. And so they lit up
the runway that I was trying to land at very
bright just for a moment so I could get oriented
and get myself situated. That was very great. So good also to use other
people, whether it's the flight service folks or the
tower folks to give you help when you need it. So this is also just another
thing that happens at night. And we'll talk about this
with the night flying that sometimes a stationary
light can appear to move. And so you have to be careful. Don't trust everything you see. A big one in terms of
an optical illusion, whether it's day or night, is
that if a runway is not flat, but it's actually inclined
going up or inclined going down, not only as it relates to
performance when we're talking about how long it
takes you to land, but also as you're
coming in, you might think that you're a
different place than you are. This is also the case if the
runway is wider or narrower than you're used to. So at Hanscom, you might
have very wide runways. If you fly out of Beverly,
you have narrower runways. So just that
difference can make you think you're at a
different orientation or you're higher or
lower than where you are. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Tina, can
you go back to that one? So basically, they're saying
if the runway is sloped and you rely on your
ordinary sight picture, you might follow a higher or
lower than standard guide path. TINA SRIVASTAVA:
Yeah, absolutely. So what it's saying,
the top one is showing that, you
know, obviously, that's just when it's flat. And so when it's
inclined up, you might you might try
to be farther away, so that you get
the same picture. So that the dotted aircraft
is where you should be. But the solid aircraft is
where you might actually be, where you're trying
to compensate because of the illusion. And then, if there's
a featureless terrain, it can really
affect you as well. So like right now, we
have a snowy condition. So it's harder to
see what's happening. It makes it difficult.
And in general, it makes you fly a lower
approach, which is not good. OK, and then just
a couple more-- I won't dive into each of them. But fog or haze, different types
of things, can cause a mirage or can cause an illusion. And so you really want to keep
referencing your instruments to make sure you are in
fact holding the altitude, or use your autopilot
to help you out. And, of course, any
reference system, so if you have a
VASI or a PAPI, those are great tools that even if
it looks like the runways, one place or the other, if
the lights are all red, you're too low. OK, another one is
motion sickness. So one thing I want to tell
you about motion sickness is when you go up and you take
your first discovery flight, you come out of this
class, you're ready to go, you might feel a
little bit motion sick. And that's OK. You're in a tiny airplane. It might be bouncing
around a little bit. What I'm here to say
is that that goes away. You can actually train
your body to get used to it and kind of get over
that motion sickness. But, unfortunately, you
can lose that tolerance that you built up
if you wait a really long time between flights. I'm at MIT, so I
don't know how much I need to tell you about stress. I think we all
know about stress. We have different ways
of dealing with it. But just as much as it
affects your ability to take an exam at
MIT, that stress can also affect your ability
to fly and think logically as you might need to to do
aeronautical decision making. PHILIP GREENSPUN: And
that's a good time to think about whether
you should bring an instructor along on a trip. You know, if you're tired or
you're upset about something, then be part of
a two-pilot crew. TINA SRIVASTAVA: Exactly. Fatigue is a big one. If you do take my advice and
look at those NTSB reports, a large number of
them are talking about airline pilots that have
just been flying for 22 hours and something happens, whereas
if you really think through it, you know, maybe that issue
wouldn't have happened, but they're so tired that those
things result in an issue. So really be mindful of how much
fatigue can affect your ability to fly and what stresses
it puts on the pilot. Dehydration and heat
stroke are big ones. Here, in this area, it gets
very hot in the summers. Make sure to bring
a bottle of water with you when you go flying. It can be a big issue. And, you know, if you're
feeling kind of lightheaded, take a drink of water. It can make a big difference. All right, so no
alcohol or drugs while flying or before flying. There are some
specific regulations. They're much more
strict than driving, which I think is a good thing. So please take a look at that,
14 CFR Part 91, the blood alcohol level and the
time since the last drink. It's really not worth it. You're flying as
a hobby, for fun, don't do something
that's unsafe. Some of these are
ways to remember, the bottle to throttle
examples here. So I'll let you take
a look at those. Also, don't carry drugs. I don't know if I need
to elaborate on that. OK, so we talked about vision. Vision is one of the things
that in your medical exam, you're AME is going
to look at your vision and test your ability to see. One thing to keep
in mind is that when you're looking out
your windshield, you can basically
kind of zone out. And so you think you're
looking out your windshield and you're scanning
for aircraft, but you've sort of
stopped paying attention. So one thing that they
recommend you do is actually have a series of very
specific eye movements. I just moved my head. But, again, don't
move your head. But kind of look with
your eyes to scan across, so that you're actually
specifically deciding and you're specifically
looking and scanning the air for other aircraft. And tell this to
your passengers. You don't have to be a trained
pilot to look for aircraft. I always tell all
of my passengers. Look out the window. Tell me if you see
other aircraft. OK, so we're going to dive into
aeronautical decision-making. One quick thing I'll say is that
I brought a couple of magazines here. Although some of them are older,
they have some good content. So this one is about
aviation safety. For folks today that we're
interested in the talk about instrument
flight, there's actually a magazine called IFR Refresher
and specifically focuses on topics related to
instrument flight. And then a number of
these Aviation Safety that talk about topics
that I felt were relevant, such as flying with
icing is one of the ones here and flying at night. And then there's a
general IFR magazine that just talks about some
good articles about how you handle your skills in
flying instrument approaches, such as ILS. So these are kind of first
come, first serve over here. So aeronautical
decision-making-- so how you make decisions
when you're in the cockpit can really affect how
you successfully exit a very negative situations. So whether it's what we were
just talking about with regard to having spatial disorientation
or having carbon monoxide poisoning versus
an engine failure or specific issue
or a weather issue, the way that you go
about making a decision can significantly
impact the outcome. So we're going to talk about
decision-making, hazards, how we go about evaluating
risks, and having personal checklists. So in aeronautical
decision-making, one thing to think
about is just that there is a way that you
can teach someone how to make good decisions. So in addition to learning
about your airplane and learning how to
fly, one thing that throughout your pilot
training is that you'll learn how to make decisions. So crew resource management
is one specific aspect. And we've been alluding
to that all day, talking about how to
use either your co-pilot or whoever it is that's
sitting next to you in the plane or your
other passengers as well. There are a number of
aircraft that we talk about, and we discuss the
FAA regulations earlier about
mandated requirements to have a co-pilot or
sometimes other folks. But there even people
outside your cockpit that you could rely on--
air traffic controllers, we talked about, flight
service stations, for example. So again really think
about when you're flying, although the FAA might
require just a crew of one, whether you really are
all alone or there are other people you can rely on. So there are a lot of aspects
to making good decisions. And this is part of why pilots
love talking to other pilots. They also just like
discussing if they encountered an
issue, how they went about dealing with that issue. And talking to other people
about their experiences is actually a good way to learn. One thing you
should also know is about your personal attitudes. I think that might have
been another reason Laz, our F-22 pilot yesterday was
so against Top Gun, the concept of being a very arrogant person
that violates the rules is really not a good stereotype
for a pilot because people that fly like that are more
likely to have accidents. How you can modify
your behavior, how to recognize and
cope with stress, we could certainly
use that here at MIT. And then how to really
assess risks properly, we talked about
weather as an example. How do you know if you have
the right weather information? Have you evaluated a
risk appropriately? And we've really tried to give
you pointers and cues for that. Especially if they tell you
VFR flight not advisable, it's not advisable. That means it's
probably a bad idea. So hazards and risks-- so a hazard is
basically a condition or an event, something
that you might encounter, whereas risk is
basically your assessment of how likely is that risk? How likely is that hazard
going to come to be? What impact could that
hazard have on your outcome? So one thing, again,
is about your attitude. So don't be like
those Top Gun pilots. If you're very
anti-authority and you say, you know, I don't care
even if the weather folks said VFR flight not
advisable, I'm a great pilot. I can do it any way. That type of
attitude is probably going to lead you
in unsafe condition. It's really not a good idea. We also discussed the
concept of personal minimums and setting personal
minimums for yourself. The reason is that today,
for example, or after you've done a little bit
of flying, you might have a good sense of what
you're comfortable with. You might have gone up with
a lot of gusting winds. And so you might
decide that, hey, I was a little bit uncomfortable
with winds gusting to 20 knots. Even if my aircraft
is capable of it, I think that's something
that until I get a little bit more experience, I'm going to
set as a personal minimum I don't want winds
gusting over 15 knots before I decide to take
a flight by myself. So you can set your
personal minimums. Why are we talking about that? Well, the reason is on the
actual day that you're flying, you may re-evaluate
the situation. You might really want
to go flying that day. Maybe you've already arranged
with a friend to come with you. Maybe you have a destination
you're really trying to reach. Philip described a
number of situations where he's flying cross-country. He has a plan. He has to follow it. And he can't really be
away missing several days where he was trying to go. And so sometimes
in the moment you might have an impulsive nature. You might decide that
I think I can do it. I'm sure it's fine. So having personal
minimums and actually writing those down
are a really good way to hold yourself
accountable to what you had decided in a calm state
of mind was a good restriction. So one thing to keep in mind
is the assessment of risk. You also shouldn't be
overly risk averse. The FAA has guidance on
what type of equipment is required in your aircraft. So certain things
are that's required. If it's not there,
you can't fly. But there are other
things that are optional. And so if there's a piece of
equipment that's optional, that's not functional. There's a lot of importance
around understanding what is the risk of that
not being operational as an example. And we'll go through a
checklist in a little bit to assess both your
personal state of being, your aircraft state of
being, the environment, and assessing all
those risks together. But for a given risk, you want
to know, one, how likely is it? So maybe if you're
talking about weather, there is a chance that
a storm will come in. There's a chance that it won't. Then also the severity, are we
talking about some light rain showers? Or are we talking about a
very, very dangerous front with icing or thunderstorms? So that's the difference
between the likelihood and the severity. Both of those have to be
assessed for a given hazard that you encounter when
you assess its risk. So there's this way
of checking yourself. It's called IMSAFE. So this is just
determining just you-- not the airplane, not the
environment-- as a pilot if you're safe to fly. So do you have an illness? Or are you taking medications
that might affect your ability to fly? Are you very stressed out? Do you have your
thermodynamics final coming up and you're really
nervous about it? Again, we talked about there
are also legal regulations. You can't have alcohol or drugs
that could affect your ability to fly. Are you just very tired? Or really, just are you
very distracted by something that's happening? The PAVE checklist
is the one I was referring to that
actually considers all of these different things. So the IMSAFE is just the pilot. A is referring to the aircraft. So this is when we're talking
about are certain things different about the aircraft? Maybe it's a new
aircraft that you're not really comfortable with. Maybe you're
checked out, but you don't have that many hours
in that particular aircraft. Or maybe you know we've
talked about the difference between steam gauge and G1000. Maybe you're really used
to flying steam gauge and this is a G1000. So there's nothing actually
wrong with the airplane, but you may be less comfortable. Environmental, so
that could be weather. That could be flying
to a new airport. That could be flying
to an airport that has some special conditions. Maybe it's a grass strip. You're flying to
Katama, which is a grass runway out at Martha's Vineyard
right next to the beach. It's really beautiful. I recommend it. But maybe if it's your first
time, flying to a soft field, that could be a concern. External pressures, that's what
we were just talking about. You're already
committed to being somewhere later in the day. You've met up with somebody. You're with a friend. You had decided to
take them flying. They really wanted to go. But the weather is
looking a little bit iffy. So one thing that's good
about this PAVE checklist is to kind of put
things in perspective. That maybe you're feeling
a little bit stressed out or distracted about an MIT exam,
but the aircraft is the one that you've been flying a lot. You're very familiar with it. You have a lot of
time on the aircraft. Everything is working well. You have a good amount of fuel. The weather's great. It's a beautiful day. You're flying to
familiar airports. And you don't have any
external pressures that day. There's no one you're
trying to meet. There's nothing you're
trying to get done. So that might be a good day
that, OK, one of these things is a little bit iffy, nothing
crossed your minimums, but it's just something
that maybe you could still go ahead and fly. However, if it's
multiple things, if it's a different aircraft. It's a different location. You're having stresses. These start becoming
times that you want to take these risks even
more seriously, because as they come together, it could
affect your ability to have a safe flight. So just these types
of personal checklists are a great way to assess
risk and make decisions as you're trying to
decide whether or not to go on a flight. And these are just a breakdown
of some of the things I just said on the
environmental condition. So nighttime is also on there. Tomorrow, we'll talk
about night flying in particular and the
fact that basically in the US with just your
private pilot's license, you can fly at night. A lot of other
countries consider night flying just as advanced
as instrument flying. And you need your
instrument rating to fly at night because
of all the concerns about not being able to see
much outside your airplane. So be mindful that,
you know, it's a slightly more challenging
condition to fly in. And how does that
affect your ability to assess the other risks
that might be taking place? I really would
recommend, especially when you're first
getting certified, you don't really make plans
anywhere near the time that you're supposed
to be done flying. Most flight schools will
give you a flight block of 2 and 1/2 hours. Make sure that you don't
have to be anywhere even for a few hours after that. In case the weather got bad,
you had to land somewhere else, you don't want those
external pressures affecting your decision-making
when you're in the cockpit. This is another way to
think about it in terms of this 5 "P" checklist. So there are certain
kind of different parts through the flight. We discussed the
pre-flight, take-off, while you're kind of cruising
along, you're descending and you're flying,
and it might be good to kind of look through
all of these different aspects about when you're flying
and kind of checklist for yourself to understand
what's happening. There are a lot of
different resources that talk about aeronautical
decision-making. I think one of
the best resources is really talking to other
pilots about experiences that they've gone
through and learning after you go through an
experience reflecting afterwards whether it's
through your instructor, with your friends. You know, what happened? What could I have
done differently? Was that the right
decision to make? So even these little
things, like Phillip was talking about
flying with Oxana, trying to avoid some weather. There was rain. Thinking about how he evaluated
that risk of that thunderstorm. What could he have
done differently? Was that the right decision? And in general, making
a conservative decision is good, because it's
your life at stake that we're talking about. All right, so I think we've
talked a lot about this. Are there any specific questions
on aeronautical decision-making or human factors in general? Yes. AUDIENCE: You
mentioned currency. Is there like a recommended
frequency, or like rule of thumb, like how often
you should be flying to be maintaining your skills? PHILIP GREENSPUN: We're going
to cover that at the very end. There's a Cirrus that we put
together this big matrix. They don't tell you how
often to fly to practice. But they tell you
given how recently you've been flying
and practicing, here's the kind of weather
that should be challenging. TINA SRIVASTAVA: So the question
for those who couldn't hear was just about the currency. So are there rules about
how often you need to fly? And there are rules,
especially related to carrying passengers
at night, for example. There are certain legal
currency requirements. But just as Philip said, there's
also just personal minimums that you might want
to set for yourself. If you haven't gone
flying for a month, you may be legally
current, but may not be a good time to take
a bunch of passengers to a new destination that
you haven't flown to before. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Yeah, so
you remember from yesterday, there's that 90 day, three
takeoffs and landings within the preceding
90 days before you can carry passengers. That's a good minimum. A lot depends on
the type of aircraft and how familiar
you are with it. So if you have 500 hours in
a very logically designed airplane like the
Cirrus, you know, then you're going
to be safe probably without flying too often. In a more complicated
aircraft, you know, that has buttons and
levers just randomly strewn across the panel, which seems
to be the industry standard, you know, if you haven't
flown it for a month, you may actually be
a little bit at sea as to where are the flaps? Where is the gear? So a lot depends on how
many hours of experience you have in the type of
aircraft you're going to fly and just how inherently
challenging it is to fly. The practical
currency requirements for a multi-engine
piston airplane are going to be very
different from those that you might use
in the Piper cub. TINA SRIVASTAVA: Yeah, when
we polled the class earlier, I think there were
70 of you have really only flown once or not at all. And so that's a
lot of people that don't have flying experience. So I would say, you know,
back before I had 200 hours, or even before I had 100
hours of flying experience, I actually set very strict
currency requirements. I had to fly, you know, two
times a week before I really felt comfortable
taking up a passenger, when I wanted to fly relatively
frequently with an instructor and practice stall recovery,
these types of things. And I think that's good. Make it as much as you need
to in order to be safe. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Yeah. You could also decide again, if
you haven't flown for a while, are you going to fly
an IFR approach down to minimums, down at 200 feet
above the runway in the clouds by yourself in an airplane with
no autopilot, would be legal? Or you're going to say,
look, I'm a little bit rusty, so I'm going to only fly
on a fairly calm VFR day and get back into it? So a lot depends on the
challenge of the flight that you're considering. Who else has a question? I'll tell you one
more little story. A friend of mine had a twin
engine airplane, a Cessna 340, which is a very
complicated airplane with-- I think it has six fuel tanks
and all kinds of levers. It's pressurized off
the turbo chargers. Anyway, one engine
caught on fire. So an engine caught on fire. He's got four or five people
from his family in the back. And he manages to get the fire
out by cutting off the fuel, I guess, to the burning engine. He's right above Bradley
Field in Connecticut. So that's one of the largest
airports actually in the world. It's probably among
the top few percent of big airports in the world
in terms of physical size. They have regular
airline service. They have a full-time
fire department. They have a control tower. They have a runway that's about
as long as Logan's, you know, like close to 1
miles long runway. So he decides, well,
I've got one engine. It's nighttime. It was night. The controllers are right here. Should I just, you know,
spiral down and land on one of these huge
runways at Bradley and the fire department come
up and meet the airplane? Or-- that's option 1. Let's see what you guys think. Option 2, let me continue
to my home airport at Fitchburg, which
is unattended. I don't think there's a fire
department that's there. There's no control tower. The runway is pretty
short, 4,500 feet. But on the other hand,
it is the home airport. So it's very familiar. And he's got one engine left. You only need one
engine to descend. So what do you
guys think, A or B? Land it at Bradley
or go to Pittsburgh? OK, what do you
think this guy did? AUDIENCE: He went to Fitchburg. PHILIP GREENSPUN: He
went to Fitchburg. And he wrecked the airplane. You know, he landed. But I don't know-- it's
twins with one engine. They always say the
second engine carries you to the scene of the accident. We'll talk about that tomorrow. So they just are hard--
it's hard to maintain-- it's hard to keep them
going perfectly straight. So, of course, he didn't
go perfectly straight down the runway, went off
the side of the runway, did some damage to the airplane. Nobody was hurt, fortunately. The punchline of the story
is he doesn't tell this as an example of bad
aeronautical decision-making he tells this as a story
of good decisions and making good
decisions as a pilot. And I'm not really sure why. But anyway, I just
wanted to tell you, like despite all
those checklists, people can have very
different perspectives on what constitutes a wise decision. But personally, I try to
do-- you know, I have an ATP. But I try to do flights whenever
possible that require only a student pilot level of skill. And that gives me a nice margin.
