You wrote, in part:
>To me this pilot exercised bad judgment in several ways: 1) flying
>without knowledge of one of the cockpit systems, 2) kneejerk decision
>that something had gone wrong without checking further, 3) kneejerk
>decision to put it into a field instead of the airport, 4) little or
>no further diagnosis of the problem.
I agree with your statement, but...
I have read that some researchers believe decision making is, in part, a process of pattern matching. As a new private pilot, our subject appears to have attempted to fit the novel situation he was presented with into the limited experience (small set of patterns) he had gathered to that point.
The decision to land in a field, for example, is an analog to the forced landing we all practiced as GA students. He had a serious problem he couldn't cure, so he landing off-airport.
It would be interesting to hear if this pilot had ever been given a problem with no obvious or book solution during training. In my experience building LOFT scenarios, these often elicit the most interesting (and sometimes bizzare) behavior. With no pattern to match, the sky is the limit.
I would like to learn more about pattern matching from our experts.
>Each of these elements of the situation is open to modification >through training.
I also agree with this statement, but...
I also think that an inadequate GA training environment CREATED some of these problems. How did our novice pilot come to be flying this aircraft without having been given instruction in use and disabling of the autopilot? Had he been given training on aircraft systems? From my own experience, this is a serious weakness in the general aviation (GA) community. This is a cultural problem as well as a training problem.
Going back to the decision to land in a field, I wonder how much of his training was devoted to breaking out of the pattern-matching mode and really considering how this new problem *could* be dealt with. I'm confident that the training you are developing at OSU addresses this issue. Sadly, it will not be mandatory any time soon.
I have often argued that we have actually trained some crews to have their accidents. My favorite is the UAL DC-8 that ran out of fuel while troubleshooting a gear malfunction at Portland in 1978. The way we used flight simulators back then, for every red light there was a definitive solution. We taught our crews that if they did everything just so, they could get the light to go out or the component back. Our DC-8 crew was just trying to recreate what had happened in the sim so many times, IMHO. So i
t may have been with our Cessna pilot.
>I want to thank Neil for putting my book, "Pilot Judgment and Crew >Resource Management" up as the September book of the month.
My pleasure! Everyone should be advised that Amazon.com is temporarily out of Dick's book. If you tried to order and received an out-of-stock email, try again in the near future.
Best regards,
Neil Krey
neilkrey_at_why.net
http://users.why.net/neilkrey/