DenverDanny From United States of America, joined Sep 2007, 227 posts, RR: 0 Posted (3 years 2 months 3 days 18 hours ago) and read 5872 times:
Curious after another discussion...
How come some pilots seem to have a high presence of mind during difficult flying situations and/or air crashes while others don't? What leads a pilot to success in crisis situations?
Is it training? Can training and remembering it adequately prepare you?
What about years of experience flying?
Is it genetic? Is it instinct? Is it chemical, in the way that certain people react or don't react to different stimuli, such as alarms and smoke?
Is it the way they were raised?
I can think of a number of aviation accidents that could be used as examples as pro or con for the above. Does it just depend on the crisis which applies?
tdscanuck From Canada, joined Jan 2006, 12709 posts, RR: 81 Reply 1, posted (3 years 2 months 3 days 18 hours ago) and read 5808 times:
Quoting DenverDanny (Thread starter): How come some pilots seem to have a high presence of mind during difficult flying situations and/or air crashes while others don't? What leads a pilot to success in crisis situations?
Training and common sense, plus a little bit of luck in some situations.
Quoting DenverDanny (Thread starter): Is it training? Can training and remembering it adequately prepare you?
This is a big part of it...training instills automatic reactions that should occur without a great deal of thinking. This helps get through the initial panic tendency in an unfamiliar situation.
That's a double edged sword. Lots of experience increases the chance that a pilot has seen a situation before and will recognize and react appropriately. However, a lot of uneventful experience can instill complacency.
Fly2HMO From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 2, posted (3 years 2 months 3 days 16 hours ago) and read 5730 times:
So I see the HHI incident is bugging you...
Quoting DenverDanny (Thread starter): How come some pilots seem to have a high presence of mind during difficult flying situations and/or air crashes while others don't?
The only major example I can think of of those who don't, and only to an extent, is the Tenerife accident. And maybe the more recent Colgan crash. Both in which stress, fatigue, get-there-itis, and other distractions played a huge factor.
Keeping cool. Thinking rationally. And most importantly, as dumb as it sounds: FLYING the plane, rather than putting all the effort at panicking and acting like a chicken with its head cut off.
Quoting DenverDanny (Thread starter): Is it training? Can training and remembering it adequately prepare you?
Even more so than training, BUT as they say, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, so a good pilot would have to remain flexible, think out of the box, and not get accustomed to routine
Quoting DenverDanny (Thread starter): Is it genetic? Is it instinct? Is it chemical, in the way that certain people react or don't react to different stimuli, such as alarms and smoke?
I believe to an extent, perhaps. I've come across a few pilots who I know I would not trust flying my family with at all, and they're not the brightest people on the ground or driving either. And these are guys with much more flying time than me.
Perhaps. My good flying buddies and myself included seemed to be very different from most other kids. We all seemed to be more into strategy games, reading technical stuff, drawing accurate planes, building models/LEGOs, and other stuff rather than the usual kids that seemed more obsessed with sports and stuff. Pilots tend to be really nerdy. I know I am
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