Additional Event Information & Acknowledgement of Industry Sponsor(s):
This seminar returns to familiar FAA human-factors and risk-management guidance, but in an unfamiliar way: through the eyes of an experienced PIC, whose hard-learned lessons and real-world examples reveal what that guidance means where it matters, in the cockpit. We are not learning the guidance as a first-time student. We are learning to see its deeper lessons.
Accident investigations show what can happen when a pilot's normal cues and safety margins fail to expose a developing vulnerability. NASA/ASRS reports provide the complementary perspective: pilots who recognized problematic conditions and successfully interrupted them. Together, these examples are used to identify practical ways an experienced pilot can recognize when familiar habits, expectations, assumptions, vigilance, capability, or safety margins may no longer be providing the clarity and recognition you normally can expect.
Why It Matters
This seminar looks at a problem that can be difficult to recognize precisely because an experienced pilot is doing what has worked before.
Experience, familiarity, and prediction normally make flying more efficient. But they can also make an unexpected change, discrepancy, or deteriorating condition easier to absorb into an otherwise familiar picture.
The seminar asks a different question: What can an experienced PIC recognize before recognizing the mistake itself?
Using accident investigations, FAA guidance, and NASA/ASRS reports of successful interventions, we examine how expectation, familiarity, habit, and changing operational conditions can conceal developing vulnerability.
What You Will Learn
You will develop and apply practical techniques for:
- Establish Before You Accept — know what you have actually established before relying on it.
- Expose the Expectation Before You Act — recognize what you expected and compare it with what you actually received.
- Anticipate the Threat — Pre-Decide the Response — recognize developing vulnerability and decide in advance how you can interrupt it.
- Recognize What You Are About to Lose — identify options, margins, time, or opportunities that may disappear if you continue.
- Interrupt Before You Solve — stop an unresolved situation from continuing before trying to make sense of it.
- Verify the Result — determine whether the operational picture has actually been restored and whether the intervention worked.
These techniques will be applied to realistic Part 91 situations involving traffic, ATC clearances, runway operations, workload, expectations, and changing operational margins.
ACS References
- Risk Management
- Situational Awareness
- Single-Pilot Resource Management
- Aeronautical Decision-Making
- Confirmation and Expectation Bias
FAA Publications and Guidance
- AC 60-22 — Aeronautical Decision Making
- AC 90-48E — Pilots' Role in Collision Avoidance
- AC 91-79B — Aircraft Landing Performance and Runway Excursion Mitigation
- FAA-H-8083-2A — Risk Management Handbook
- Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM):
- 4-4-1 — Clearance
- 4-4-7 — Pilot Responsibility upon Clearance Issuance
- 4-4-10 — Adherence to Clearance
- 5-5-1 — General
- 5-5-2 — Air Traffic Clearance
Regulatory References
- 14 CFR § 91.3 — Responsibility and Authority of the Pilot in Command
- 14 CFR § 91.123 — Compliance with ATC Clearances and Instructions
Case and Supporting Material
- NTSB CEN23LA056 — runway excursion / landing-performance case
- NTSB WPR16FA172 — traffic-identification / collision-avoidance case
- NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) / CALLBACK reports illustrating successful recognition and intervention
The Point
This is not another decision-making model to memorize. The objective is to turn a few simple questions into useful cockpit habits:
What might I not know?
What am I about to lose?
What will I do?
How will I know?
For additional and background information, please visit the Orlando Executive Airport FAASTeam Library web site: https://www.fsr-inc.org/FAAST/Seminar/Notice.aspx
Thanks to Lindsey Merced at the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority (GOAA) for use of their Administrative Offices, to Obie Young, Florida Aviation Network, a FAASTeam Industry Member, and to John Tenney, FAASTeam Rep.