The pilot, an actor in their own safety

"The procedures should have been followed"; "he should have given up"; "there was a bad decision"... All of these are often true when analyzing an accident, but they are often a posteriori observations.

The fact is, the pilot concerned would have no problem coming to the same analysis if he'd known the end of the story. But in the dynamics of the situation: what would have enabled him to make that famous "right decision", or to apply a known procedure, was not accessible.

The question is: are we the same under stress, under emotion? The answer is no.

The aim of this book is to help you understand the basics of human functioning, so that you can act and anticipate these situations, and understand a few neurological and psychological concepts so that you can put them to good use in your own safety.

Talking about things that can't be quantified using equations may seem out of place when you're used to measuring everything: an aircraft is a concentration of physics, mechanics and mathematics. But at the controls, there's a concentration of biology, chemistry and an immense number of unknowns: a pilot. This contradiction calls for Cartesian humility. It's because a pilot is generally Cartesian that he should be interested in these subjects, now widely documented, studied and applied in other fields.

And what if we were to take responsibility for our own safety?

Table of contents

A few words before we begin

1. Self-awareness

2. Mental Modes

3. Stress and Performance

4. Internal Discourse

5. Emotions

6. The Weak Signal

7. Attention

8. The Comfort Zone

9. Self-esteem and ego

10. Dunning-Kruger Effect

11. Learning

12. Error and learning

13. Error and Resilience

14. The Surprise Effect

15. Workload

16. Breathing

17. Mental Imagery

18. Cognitive Bias

19. Communication

20. Explicitation and Self-Explanation

21. Chance

22. Decision-making: professional tools

23. ASSESSMENT: what I know and what I can do

24. The Human Factors dashboard

A few final words

APPENDICES

Biblio