 The Federal Aviation Administration's Aviation Safety Program presents the SAKER SKYS Aviation Training Series. The SAKER SKYS agenda originated in 1998 when the administrator and her team identified the most critical and most common causes for aviation accidents. In general aviation these accidents fall into six causal areas, aeronautical decision making, weather, loss of control, control flight into terrain, survivability and runway incursions. Together they make up the majority of all general aviation actions. We encourage all airmen to view all six presentations. The FAA's primary goal is reducing fatal accidents and that's the responsibility we all shape. Let's all take the time to focus our attention on these six critical subjects. Hello, my name is Ralph Hood and I'm the world's greatest pilot. Actually that's not true, in fact I'll admit half my lies aren't true. But today I'm here to talk about aviation safety and the FAA's initiative called SAKER SKYS. As pilots we don't start our flying careers or even today's flight with total disregard for good judgment or good skills. But along the way mistakes are made, bad habits are learned, good judgment is left behind on the ramp. And all too often a few souls are lost in the ink of the morning headlines. It's our intention to help you find the way to truly safer skies. You know I'd take a NASA mainframe computer to keep track of the mistakes and judgment errors I've made in my 33 years of flying. But I have lived to tell about it. And it's our intention to help you identify the issues and the solutions that will make us all better aviators. Today's program is about aeronautical decision making or ADM. And it will take us through the dynamics of planning and executing a flight from the minute your feet hit the floor in the morning until the keys are safely back in your pocket after each flight. Now we're not going to spend any time at all on the technical skills of actually flying. Instead we will concentrate on the non-technical skills or human factors. We figure if you're watching this DVD you already know how to fly. The SAKER SKYS series is about identifying risk issues and doing something about them. Subsequent programs will deal with some of the other important safety issues. This initial series will address six. The first is aeronautical decision making ADM, loss of control, weather, control flight into terrain, survivability, and runway incursions. Now obviously some of these topics overlap. We will not cover the entire range of issues related to aeronautical safety but as the old Chinese proverb states, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Aeronautical decision making ADM is defined as a systematic approach to the mental process used by pilots to consistently determine the best course of action in response to a given set of circumstances. Another way to look at ADM is controlling the errors. Error management. And within the aeronautical decision making process that relies upon situation awareness, problem or threat recognition and good judgment in resolving the threat or the error. For example, forgetting to extend the gear is an error and a definite threat. I've done that but recognizing that error and doing something about it are the next steps and that's what this program is all about. Today we are assuming that you already have a good working knowledge of your aircraft systems, the physics of flight, the rules and regulations and weather and that you know how to fly your aircraft. These are the technical skills and although it is impossible to be a good aviator without adequate technical skills, this is not our subject today. Instead our focus today is on the non-technical skills, the human factors of flying, and the human, the pilot, as the decision maker for our discussion does have a truckload of limitations and irrationality. A simple way to use the decision making process is to remember the three P's. Perceive, process, perform. Now one of the world's leading advocates of aeronautical decision making is Janine Koshan. Her day job is actually by night. She is the captain of a Boeing 767 for a major U.S. all cargo air carrier. By day she serves as a designated pilot examiner to the local aviation community. Her other interests in her spare time include a fleet of restored antiques which Janine and her husband, Captain Dennis Koshan, fly and maintain as A&P mechanics with inspector authorization. Janine is here with us today at the FAA Production Studios in Florida at Lakeland Lender Field to take us through a learning process that is destined to make us all a little better at what we do. It is my pleasure to be here this afternoon. Ralph summed up aeronautical decision making quite succinctly when he spoke of recognizing the threats and errors and our need to do something about them. Of course there's much more to the topic and that's what we're here to talk about beginning with the theory and moving into the practice of good aeronautical decision making. As we focus on learning and exhibiting good pilot judgment keep in mind the requirements to continually practice good technical skills and integrate the non-technical or human factor skills of communication, workload management, situation awareness, leadership and planning into each and every decision we make. To understand how the perceived process and perform framework will aid in improving our aeronautical decision making we need to first look at just a few general human decision making concepts. As Ralph said earlier the definition of aeronautical decision making is a systematic approach to the mental process used by all involved in aviation to consistently determine the best course of action in response to a given set of circumstances. Now if we break this definition down the first thing we want to look at is the mental process and this is really human information processing which we're going to look at in detail in just a moment. The second part of the definition is the best course of action and it's important for us to understand that the best course of action is not necessarily the perfect solution. Human beings when making decisions practice something called satisfying. In other words we accept the best decision that we can come up with under the constraints for instance time and effort that we have available to make that decision. The third thing we need to look at is the set of circumstances. We're giving a response to a given set of circumstances and what we do as human decision makers is we look at that set of circumstances and try to recognize any pattern in those circumstances that we have seen in the past and try to match that pattern to what's going on now. So let's look at this mental process to uncover the limitations in the air prone aspects of human information processing. The first step in the human information processing model are the senses. Our five senses all gather information from the environment. The amount of information coming at our senses is much too much for the senses to be able to handle. Therefore this information is filtered by individual sensory filters. In addition each individual person's filters are different. Therefore the information that may get through the filters in one person's system may not get through in another. The second state is the perceptual system. And this is where information that has been temporarily stored in short term memory and for the visual system that's only going to last about 30 seconds. But this information is used to try to restore the information that has been lost through these sensory filters. And the problem here is it may be restored in air. In other words we're trying to fill in the gaps or our brain is trying to fill in the gaps and what could happen are things like illusions. For instance one of the visual illusions that could occur is the corridor illusion. And if you look at this slide you'll see that the cylinders in this picture appear to be of different heights. The one in the front appears smaller, the one in the back appears much larger. And this is due to trying to fill in the gaps in the information because there's way too much information available on this one picture for us to be able to perceive it correctly. In reality these cylinders are all the same height. So the perceptual system allows for errors and the type of error quite often is a visual illusion. The next step in the human information processing model is the decision channel. And this is where the processing can occur at only about 4 bits per second. That's the highest processing speed we can have. And in this system we mix the incoming pre-processed information with information from long term memory. Now in this particular stage this is where there's a competition for our attentional resources. What are we going to pay attention to? In addition this is where we use what is known as working memory. And the human's working memory capacity is only about 7 plus or minus 2 chunks or bits of information at any one time. Therefore the long term memory can introduce errors due to motivations, attitudes, human emotions, distractions, predispositions or personality factors if you will. As well as extraneous information and facts which have nothing to do with the problem at hand. So there are many types of errors that can occur during this decisional process in the information processing model. The last stage in the model is the response stage. Now a response can either be in action or action. Those are both responses. In addition humans tend to also make automatic responses. Automatic responses can occur when we've got something that is very, very well learned. Therefore we don't need to go all the way through the full information processing system. We jump right to the automatic response. So you can see that through each of these stages of the human information processing system there are many, many, many chances for errors to occur. And speaking of error let's take a quick look at a definition of human or pilot error. Pilot error is an action or inaction that leads to a deviation from your or another's intentions or expectations. And there are many, many, many types of errors but just as a review of the human information processing system let's take a look at the three main types of errors that can occur. For instance perceptual errors are motor or control errors. And these are due to a problem either in the sensory, perceptual and or response mechanism. And this would be for instance when you're flying your aircraft and let's say we end up with a visual illusion or spatial disorientation the response to what we think we are perceiving is incorrect. The second type of errors are procedural errors. Now this is a response mechanism failure. And since we fail to program in the correct airport in our GPS or we tune the wrong communication frequency. Now the third type of errors are decisional errors. And this is a combination of cognitive activities and judgments. Decisional errors are very, very complex because there's a large number of relevant pieces of information. We need to specify what that information is, identify the alternatives. And in addition while we're doing this the humanness comes back into play and it's affected by emotions, values and social pressures. For instance the decisional error would be continued flight into whether beyond the pilots or the aircraft capabilities. There are many other human decision making limitations and influences that we want to look at before we jump into our theoretical flight and go through the practice of good aeronautical decision making. So as we go through our flight we can look back and see how some of these limitations and influences affect our decision making. First of all how alternatives are framed. In other words how we look at making a decision will determine how much risk we are willing to take. For instance if we frame something in the positive for instance I'm flying from Orlando to Jacksonville. And I look and I say gee I can save a lot of time. I won't have to drive for three and a half hours. I'll have my airplane there. I can get back home tonight. And I frame it in the positive versus gee if I fly and the weather goes down and I'm going to have to land and I'm going to have to rent a car then I'm going to have to drive on up there anyway and the airplane's stuck. Well that's framed in the negative. If I frame it in the positive and look at the positive aspects I will be more willing to take more risk to go ahead and fly versus drive when making that decision. So we need to remember that how we frame the alternatives in our own mind will affect how much risk we are willing to take. A second influence on human decision making are judgmental heuristics. And what these are are quick and dirty methods of making judgments about a situation. One example of a judgmental heuristic is representativeness. Let me give you an example. Let's say you're checking into a hotel and there's some conventions going on and there's a lawyer convention and a biker convention. And there's a thousand bikers at the biker convention and a hundred lawyers at the lawyer convention. So if we were to use rational decision making versus human decision making there would be a ten to one chance that whoever is checking in is a biker. But we look up at the check-in desk and there's a gentleman in his nice suit and his shirt with his initials on his sleeve. And we look at that person and what do we assume he is a biker or a lawyer. Lawyer absolutely what biker is going to wear a white start shirt and tie with initials on his sleeve. But this individual happens to be a biker. So it's how representative the alternatives are in the environment will influence our decision making process. Another limitation of human decision making process are biases. Let me just give you one. Confirmation bias. Human beings have a tendency to look for information in the environment that confirms a decision that they've already made. Happens all the time. It's been proven over and over and over again in research. So we have to remember this when we start looking at the decisions we make to try to be objective and look at both sides of the story. Was that really a good decision that we made or do we need to rethink or relook at this decision? Another influence of human decision making is the level of expertise and the training and experience each individual possesses. For instance two pilots faced with the same situation most likely will make different decisions or at least view the alternatives differently due to perceptual filters if you will based on their past experience and the type and amount of training they've had. But if you're not convinced about the fallibility of human decision making yet stand by we've got a few more limitations of human decision making. And by the way human decision making is just one very small subset of all of human cognition. Cognition is learning, thinking, remembering, forgetting, etc. But decision making is influenced by all of these factors. For instance learning, when you first learn something what you have learned first the first learned is best learned. In other words if you learn an emergency checklist one way and then later the manufacturer of the aircraft changes that emergency checklist it is much much harder to relearn the changes. We're most often going to fall back on what we learned first which is a good note for flight instructors to do their very very best to teach their students the right way the first time. Because unlearning what somebody has learned is very very difficult. Other limitations once again are thinking, remembering, forgetting, the person's attentional capacities, vigilance for instance boredom and complacency play a very very big part in decision making, social influence and stress and fatigue. Now we have the theoretical basis underlying human decision making complete with the errors inherent in the process. Let's move on to learning a method which will help us counteract some of these human frailties in our aviation activities. Perceive, process and perform. Remember this is a simplified information processing model that we can literally use on the fly. Let's first look at an overview of the perceive, process and perform model. As an example we're told to taxi to runway 7 via alpha. We perceive these instructions through our ears. Now remember we're going to have that information filtered through our sensory system of audition. So we need to gather all the information we can for instance we want to look at the taxi chart so we'll get more information this time through our visual system. The next step is to process and this is where we organize the data and identify all the possible alternatives to the information that we have just perceived. And the way we evaluate the alternatives is to try to match them to situations that we have known in the past. So this is part of our process. Remember when we are processing the information how we frame those alternatives is going to affect our decision. The third step is to perform and this is where we choose an alternative. In other words we make a decision but we perform either by action or inaction. Once again inaction is a decision. And as a note in aviation quite often it is inaction on a decision that can get us in trouble. For instance we make a decision to accept a closer runway on an approach and we're high and we're going to be a little bit fast but it's going to get us there sooner. So we say sure we'll take the closer runway and we start trying to slow down and get down so that we can land on this closer runway. Well as we get closer to the runway we may perceive that we're still a little high and fast. Well once again what do human beings like to do? Well once we make a decision we like to stick with that decision. We like to use our confirmation bias to look for information that's going to confirm that this is still a good decision. So we look around and say oh well it's a good long runway yeah I'm a little high and fast but. So we don't do anything about it and we continue on and we continue on. On the other hand had we gone to step four and evaluated look back at that decision that we made to accept that closer runway we might say you know on the other hand that was a good idea at the time but given the additional information that I've gleaned in other words I'm still high and I'm still fast in the runways right here maybe I should go ahead and go around and go land on the runway that I had planned on landing to begin with. So the evaluate portion of the perceive process and perform model really is to just go back and continue perceiving soliciting information from the environment to evaluate how that initial decision was. Was it a good one? Do we need to perceive some more information? Reprocess it and perhaps even quote unquote change our minds. So flexibility is very very important in the decision making process. Perceive process and perform. Tomorrow we're going to go on a virtual flight. This is an exercise in applying perceive process and perform model to real world flying. This theoretical flight is going to take place from a primarily general aviation towered airport in central Florida Orlando executive airport which is quite busy has a lot of flight training and we're going to go about 50 miles to the south southwest to a non-towered airport at Winterhaven, Florida and tomorrow's flight will be flying a typical single engine general aviation airplane that is equipped for instrument flight. But before we go let's take a look at some statistics and review where the higher risk segments of flying activities reside. This graph shows us the percent of accidents by phase of flight and the important numbers on this graph are that almost 20% of accidents happen during takeoff and departure but even more importantly over half 54% of accidents happen in the approach and landing phase of flights. So we've got the majority of the problems during takeoff and landing and there are quite a few reasons why. Of course we're closer to the ground it's a lot busier workload time there are more airplanes around there's a lot more information for us to be perceiving, processing and a lot more performance or response activities required from us during takeoff and landing. So we want to keep that in mind as we go on our flight tomorrow. Let's establish some ground rules. Let's talk a little bit about go no go decisions and we need to add to that continue, discontinue decisions. We'll start looking at the go no go decision tonight while we're looking at the weather on our flight plan. But it continues throughout the flight and we want to reinforce and make sure we understand in our decision making process any step of the way we can discontinue the flight. Yes? Human beings want to continue. We are spring loaded to the go position when we really should be lever locked to the no go or discontinue position. To get ready for our flight the first item of business is to evaluate our individual fitness for flight. And one way to do that is to utilize something like the I'm safe checklist which just gives you a step by step evaluation of how you're doing. For instance illness do you have any symptoms? Medication have you been taking any prescription or over the counter drugs? Remember many many many over the counter drugs are prohibitive for flying. Stress are you under extra stress alcohol? How long has it been since you've been consuming alcohol and how much alcohol was it? Are you fatigued? Have you been eating? Are you hydrated? And what you really want to look at is the total picture and right here is a checkpoint. Evaluate how do you feel? How do you stack up? Are you safe to fly? The next tool that we suggest you might want to use is the personal minimums checklist. And this particular checklist look at the pilot, the aircraft, the environment and external pressures. And the purpose of this checklist is to set your tolerances at a time when you're not going flying. What are your minimums? For instance if you're looking at external pressures you might want to say well if I'm going to fly on a business trip I'm going to set up a stipulation that says there's a good chance I won't get there and that has to be acceptable to my business partners. So you set up these parameters when you're not planning on going flying so this will help you, it's in writing so you can open it up and say where do I stand reference my personal minimums checklist. An additional risk assessment tool that puts a numerical score on your risk is also available it's called a pre-flight risk assessment and this particular tool puts actual numbers down for where do you stand as far as risk is concerned based on the type of flying that you're going to be doing, etc. So these tools are available to help you make that go-no-go decision. When we're assessing risk what we want to look at is first of all the identification of risk possibility. Where are the risks involved in this particular flight? You might also think of risks as threats for instance it could be weather, it could be a less than optimum airplane perhaps you only have one communication radio operational at the time and you usually have two it could be that you might be a little bit fatigued. What you can do is take a look at all these possible risks or threats that are facing your flight. You want to analyze these risks and then take a look and consolidate them, summarize what's the sum total of the risks that might be out there that you're facing? And then what you want to do is prioritize which of these are most important? Can you get rid of any of these risks or threats? We're going to talk about how the perceived process and perform model is going to help us do that. So let's assume it's time to go, we've already gone through our personal minimums and I'm safe checklist and we've done a risk assessment and so far we're still in the go mode. So we're going to go ahead and go on out to the airport and regardless of whether you're flying your own aircraft or a rental aircraft or a club aircraft there are some general procedures that we need to follow and of course it's going to start with perceive. The first thing we need to do is gather all of the available information. So for instance we're going to look at the weather, we're going to look at the text weather and we're going to perceive it, sure we're going to read it. The next thing we want to do is process that information. Remember we want to organize that information and determine the ramifications of this weather on our flight. In this case we take a look at the weather, you can see the text weather up there and it looks like it's IFR at the Orlando Executive Airport here where we are now although it's VFR and forecast to be VFR at Winterhaven. So now what we need to do is process our alternatives. What can we do? A couple of things we could do. We could file IFR. We could maybe get a special VFR out of the airport, out of the Orlando Executive Airport. We might want to wait till the weather improves or maybe we want to cancel the flight altogether. Once again remember our confirmation bias, we want to find a way to go and all the other limitations and influences on our decision making process have to come into play. It's going to depend on how we frame these alternatives. So we really want to be aware of those limitations and influences as we do the processing of the information that we've already perceived. Then we want to perform. Once again, action or inaction, what are we going to do? So at this point in time we've decided to go and we're going to continue with our before flight or our pre-flight checklist. The first thing most pilots are going to do is check their aircraft status. Once again, depending on whether it's your aircraft or a club aircraft, you may or may not be aware of maintenance procedures that have been performed or possible problems that have occurred recently with the airplane. For instance, let's say that we see that the oil has just been changed in our aircraft. Now granted, a good certified mechanic changed it and everything seems to be okay, but let's say we go out and now we're in flight and we see that we're having an oil pressure problem or oil pressure is low or oil temperature is rising, you might want to think back and say, ooh, there's a good chance something might be going on here, perhaps the oil filter is leaking or something to that effect and our response, our decision-making process may be a little quicker and a little more accurate because we had that preparatory information. So we want to carefully look at the aircraft logbooks and understand what is going on with our piece of equipment every time we go to fly it. Next we're going to do our aircraft inspection. We're going to do our pre-flight of the aircraft and once again, here's another area that we don't want to just assume everything's all right, which brings us to checklist usage. If we choose not to use our checklist, this is decisional error, which really results in poor judgment. So good aeronautical decision-making includes using our written checklist. Now that we're finished with our pre-flight, it's time to evaluate again. Still we're evaluating the go-no-go decision. Are we still in a go mode? Well, so far we are. The next phase of flight, before taxi and taxi. Before we taxi, we get in our aircraft, we load our passengers in the aircraft, and our number one job is to get organized. Organization, cockpit organization is really workload management, another skill that we need to use in decision-making. We not only need to organize the physical items in the cockpit, more importantly, we need to organize ourselves, our thoughts, and our passengers or other occupants of the aircraft. Now by regulation, we need to brief the other passengers or occupants of the aircraft on certain items. In addition to these regulatory issues, when we're organizing our cockpit, there's some other items that really should be discussed with our passengers. For instance, instructing them on what to touch and what not to touch. Asking them to help search for traffic. Briefing them, of course, on the type of flight that you are going to be flying, and anything interesting about the flight, for instance, if it's the first time they've been flying, they don't know how loud the engine is and those sorts of things. This briefing will help them to understand what's going on and also understand when not to bother you. It's very, very important to be specific about the sterile cockpit or certain times when you really don't want any additional distractions, not only from a passenger talking with you, but also passengers talking among themselves. Remember back to the phases of flight when the higher-risk times are departure and approach and landing. We'll also have to receive our ATIS. Once again, we're going to perceive our ATIS, process what it means, understand which are the active runways in use. We need to get our clearance, perceive the information, process our clearance. Let's talk just a little bit about expectation. Just the other night, I was flying a trip I've flown for the last 15 years out of Orlando, Florida. I go from Orlando to Wilmington, Ohio. I'm saying to my first officer, I'm going to pick up the clearance now and I had already written down the Jaguar 2 Collier's Transition as filed 5,200.15 and all I was waiting to do was copy the transponder code. So the controller comes back and he says, you are cleared to the Wilmington airport. Fly the Jaguar 2, the Alma Transition, maintain 5,200.15. And then he gave us the squat code and I wrote down the squat code and all of a sudden I'm thinking, he said Alma Transition. No, it's supposed to be the Collier Transition. So on my read back, I read back. I'm cleared to the Wilmington airport, the Jaguar 2, and you said Alma Transition. Basically saying, but that couldn't possibly be right. And he came back and he said, yes, that's what your clearance reads. Well, I picked up my paperwork, my dispatch release, and I look and I see, lo and behold, after 15 years of flying the same route, it is different. It is the Alma Transition. I am going up over Atlanta. And I did not in any way, shape, or form expect it. And I barely caught that change. And it was an important change because the routing goes two different ways. And I would have been going up, flying one way, and the controllers were expecting me to go the correct way. And if you remember what the definition of human error is, I would have not been meeting their expectations. So I didn't very well process that communication. I perceived it. But once again, just by luck, I happened to catch that he didn't say Collier's Transition. He said Alma Transition. So expectations. I heard what I wanted to hear. I see what I want to see sometimes. And that is very influential in our human decision making. So now that you've picked up your clearance, perceived it correctly, copied it correctly, read it back correctly. We're going to process it and understand where it is that we need to go. This processing portion is also the first step in situation awareness. We're painting a mental picture. We call and we get our taxi instructions. They give us our taxi instructions. We perceive to taxi to runway seven via alpha. I look at the taxi chart. I know in the past I've taxied to runway seven, but from a different location on this airport. So once again, I paint a mental picture of where I am, where I need to go, and the routing that's going to take me there. Now, I process that information. I'm ready to perform. I've read back the clearance. I've closed the door. I've completed all my checklists. And now I'm ready to taxi out. So I begin taxing to where I think taxiway alpha is. In my picture, in my mental model of what's going on here. I taxi out and the first taxi sign I see it says hotel. I'm expecting to see alpha. So now I realize I'm not where I think I am and not where I think I'm going. So I immediately need to stop, evaluate that decision that I made and go back to the beginning. Call up ground and say, for instance, how about progressive taxi? As for progressive, verify where I am before I taxi another inch. So we need to evaluate that decision as we go along. So the ground controller finally gets me taxing the right direction down to taxiway alpha to runway 7. And we're taxing up and barring any special procedures at the airport. And for instance, Orlando Executive Airport does have some special departure procedures due to all of the flight training that goes on there. But generally at most airports when we get to the end of the runway ready for takeoff, we'll change to our power controller frequency and be ready to go. Now what is it that I have to be doing? Once again, perceive I'm number one for takeoff. And I need to, once again, reevaluate the whole situation. And let's just say I get up to the end of the runway, I'm number one for takeoff. And all of a sudden, you know, I'm just not feeling real great. You know, my stomach just doesn't feel that great. But I was planning on getting lunch when I got over to Winterhaven. And I need to reevaluate how I am for flying. So we look at the, we process the information. Well, I haven't been around anybody that's particularly sick or maybe you have. Maybe a bunch of people at work have the flu and there's a chance that you're getting the flu. Or perhaps it's just that you're hungry or maybe you're just upset that you taxied to the wrong location. So you need to evaluate that and see, are we still in a go mode? Well, you think, well, you know, I'm pretty hungry, it's a short flight. Yeah, I think everything's going to be all right. And by the way, my out in this situation is I have another rated pilot capable of flying this airplane in the right seat. Worst case if something happened to me, there's no problem that he could take over and fly for me. So I've perceived the situation, I processed the situation. And now I can continue on with calling Tower and saying we're ready to go. Tower says. We go back to the beginning of the process, proceed. We're going to look to look on final, even though we're at a tower controlled airport. We still need to look on final. We need to look down the runway and make sure there are no obstructions down the runway. Complete our before takeoff checklist. Process all of the information that's going on. We are listening to aircraft being cleared for takeoff, aircraft being cleared to land. And when we're in position and hold on the runway once again, we need to search and seek out information such as was another aircraft just cleared to land on runway seven. And here we are sitting duck position and hold. Remember, human air is not only for pilots because the controllers can air as well. So we want to be perceiving and processing that information. And here's someone cleared for to land on runway seven. Perhaps you want to query the tower controller and say, you know, we're still in position runway seven. Process the information. And now we're told clear for takeoff runway seven. Once again, we continue to perceive, process that information, finish our final items, turn on our landing lights, our strobes if we have them. And go ahead and put the power to the aircraft. We continue to perceive, process and perform throughout the takeoff role into the air. The next segment of our flight is climate transition to cruise. And by the way, we're still at a high risk segment of our flight. We're still close to the airport. There's still a lot of traffic around. Now we've departed and we're climbing and we're now into the clouds, say 600 feet above the ground. And we're starting our turn on courses instructed by our departure instructions. We contacted departure controller and they respond immediately with traffic alert, turn left heading 340. Now we're bringing into the decision-making equation another factor. That's time pressure. The time pressure makes it very, very important that when we perceive the instructions correctly, we process them and immediately perform. So we need to perceive it, process and start that turn to a heading of 340. Now time pressure in the decision-making equation unfortunately also contributes to more errors. So we have to be very, very careful that we've heard it right and we performed correctly. In addition to that, we need to evaluate that decision that we made, the performance that we did as turning to the heading of 340. So we want to call the departure controller back and ask them where is that traffic for us now and make sure that we are clear of that traffic and that there isn't something else that we need to do. So time pressure is a big factor in the human decision-making process. So we're able to climb out of the Orlando Executive Airport area and we climb on up to our cruise altitude and we break out of the clouds about 2,000 feet and we climb on up to 4,000 feet on our way down to Winterhaven. And we're in cruise. Now cruise is not a particularly risky phase of flight and everything's looking pretty good. Looks like it's clearing up down to the southwest. And now we want to make a decision. Do we want to cancel IFR? There's no time pressure to make that decision. There's no real need to cancel IFR, but you might start framing your alternatives. Well, if I cancel, I can go ahead and descend when I want to descend and I can get close to the airport and I can scoot right in there and get to Winterhaven. And that's one way to frame the alternative. On the other hand, let's take a look at it this way. It's always tomorrow we're going to go out and practice our instrument approaches. And what a prime opportunity. You're already on an IFR flight plan, you've got another rated pilot in the right seat to be a safety pilot. And we might want to take this opportunity to work on our technical and our non-technical skills. But nevertheless, what we really want to do is perceive. We want to perceive the weather, the traffic, and make a decision as to whether we want to cancel our IFR flight plan. We process. And perceive is going to become very, very important because now that we've canceled IFR, the air traffic controllers were particularly busy so they didn't keep us on flight following and now we're on our own. So as we continue along, we need to pick up the weather information from the Winterhaven airport. We probably want to monitor the CTAF frequency to find out about what the traffic is doing there, how busy it is. We may be able to call Unicom and ask about the runway in use. And we want to become prepared for our landing. We get close to the airport. We're about five miles away. We're descending to our pattern altitude. We're keeping our eyes open as to what's going on. We're keeping our ears open as to what's going on. But remember, through all of those senses, we're always going to be filtering information. Pieces of information are going to be lost. And we may fill in pieces of information within accurate information. We're coming into the traffic pattern now. And now we have a decision to make. How do we want to enter the traffic pattern in a non-towered airport? There are recommended practices. And this is one area where we're making a decision where our motivations, our attitudes, whether we're polite or not, are really going to play into our decision making. Now if we're keeping in mind that we might have some student pilots in the pattern, might want to give them a little extra space, or we could just be like, oh no, I'm number one. I'm going to go straight in and I want to get on the ground because I want to go eat lunch because remember, my stomach didn't feel too well. Well, let's rethink this. First of all, let's perceive what's going on. You've got a couple of training aircraft in the pattern, or so you think that they're training aircraft. You're going to be able to make a nice downwind entry on the 45 to the active runway, which happens to be runway four at Winterhaven. You're processing this information, you're performing, you're evaluating your decision. Now, as we get closer to the airport, a lot of perceptual abilities come into play. How fast are those aircraft moving? How big are their patterns? Where are they going? We're looking at all of these items. And what we want to do is, of course, space ourselves so as to make a normal landing. Now what are most pilots thinking about on the downwind? They're thinking about putting the airplane on the ground. We're doing our before landing checklist. We're putting our gear down if it's retractable. We're setting our flaps. We're slowing down. We're getting ready for landing. On the other hand, we might want to be thinking about the go-around. Review the go-around procedure in our minds. Prepare for the go-around if it's necessary. It's a maneuver, though not really unusual, that we don't do that often. Quite frankly, we might need to practice a little more often than we do. So now we're reviewing that procedure. We finish our before landing checklist. And we're watching the spacing. And we're turning our base. And we're watching the aircraft in front of us. And we're starting to calculate. Wow, they've really slowed down. I can't slow down anymore. Now, are they going to land? Are they going to be landed? I wonder if they're going to do a touch and go. I wonder if they're going to do a full stop. I wonder if they'll be clear of the runway. So now you're turning your base to final. And this aircraft is still not on the runway. Hopefully you've got a final checklist. Perhaps a mnemonic gas undercarriage mixture prop that you're going to confirm that the major items are in the correct position prior to landing. You might even use a final, final checklist. A gump checklist at, let's say, 200 feet above the ground. Well, you're coming up to about 500 feet AGL and the aircraft ahead of you has not yet touched down. Perceive, process, and perform. We're perceiving what's going on. We're processing the information. And what do we do? We just keep on going. When do we make that decision to go around if we're going to have to go around? More experienced pilots or more expert pilots will tend to continue on and estimate that closure rate not as critically as a less experienced or a more novice pilot. For instance, if you're a very, very experienced and you're flying this flight and your pilot friend is not as experienced, he may become uncomfortable with the fact that you're continuing on as this aircraft has yet to clear the runway. But lo and behold, you're lucky. He's finally landed, slowed down enough. He's taxied off the runway. And you've done your final, final checklist and you're going to go ahead and land. Barring any cow running across the runway, unexpected gusts of wind that blow you off the center line and those sorts of things, you are ready to land. You touch down, everything's fine. You slow down, you exit the runway. What are you perceiving now? Everything around you. Processing everything around you. Of course, we're going to evaluate. Was the landing a 10? In all seriousness, we are going to continue to perceive, process and perform as we taxi in. Now, what's interesting, we're at a non-toward airport and you just remember that during your pre-flight planning, you didn't look up in the airport facility directory, where to park, where's the FBO? Well, of course, we all know that you just taxi toward the fuel sign and we ought to be at least close. But even the end of the flight, we flex back to the pre-flight planning that we all need to do prior to embarking on our flight. As we taxi in, we find the fuel sign, we see the FBO and we're taxing into the chocks, we see a nice parking place. So the flight's over, we don't have to worry about anything anymore. Well, on the other hand, we still need to continue to perceive, process, perform and evaluate. Because we were able to go through this whole flight and discuss aeronautical decision-making, process and perform model without really having to look at accidents or bent airplanes. But this happens to be one that is quite interesting where at the end of the flight, where the aircraft was being taxied into the chocks, an aircraft got out of control and hit another aircraft on the ramp and we ended up with two damaged airplanes. As Ralph had said earlier, the flight is not over until the keys are back in your pocket, the aircraft is chocked or back in the hangar and everybody is away from the airplane. To summarize aeronautical decision-making, you start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck. Now what we want to do is enhance the experience by looking at the flight that we just flew. To evaluate, we want to evaluate the balance of our luck and our experience and to do that, the first thing we want to do is perceive. Review the flight, use your metacognition. In other words, go back and think about what you were thinking. Look at your flight, what was going on in your head during that flight. Process your flight, review it from beginning to end as objectively as you can. How might have you changed your actions or your inactions? And then perform. Review your personal minimums checklist. Perhaps you want to increase or decrease some of the tolerances, but once again, do this not when you're preparing to go fly, but when you're at home or in your office sitting at a desk and you can objectively think about these parameters. Then we need to evaluate and reevaluate each and every flight. And use the perceive, process, perform, and evaluate model for every aeronautical decision we make. Therefore, we'll be able to fill up our bag of experience before our bag of luck runs out. When we take the time to analyze all of the factors involved in safely completing even a simple flight for a short distance, we begin to realize that the responsibilities that we carry as pilots have to be taken very, very seriously. Our first goal should be zero mistakes and no errors. And realistically, it's not possible to do that, but it is possible to try. When the technical skills under your control are in hand and you've minimized the errors, the potential threats are greatly diminished. Of course, at every stage of flight, there are continuing situations that require your recognition, perceive, your decisions, the process, and your actions perform. The three P's of perceive, process, and perform should be constant and automatic whenever you're operating in any flight crew capacity. Good aeronautical decision making is just one of the steps as we strive for safer skies.