Situational awareness
Awareness is built and lost continuously. Task saturation, fatigue and surprise degrade it fastest. Structured cross-checks and callouts exist to rebuild it before the picture is fully lost.
Illusions
Somatogravic illusion makes acceleration feel like a pitch-up, prompting dangerous nose-down inputs at night. The black-hole approach makes pilots fly low. Instruments, not sensations, must be believed.
CRM
Crew resource management distributes workload, encourages assertive communication regardless of rank, and defines who flies while the other troubleshoots. Its value is best measured in accidents that never happened.
Key points
- Trust instruments over vestibular sensation, always.
- Fatigue degrades judgement before it degrades motor skills.
- Effective CRM depends on a flat enough hierarchy to raise concerns.
Knowledge check