It was found that sometimes, in bad weather, pilots relied too much on external clues and the actions of other pilots right in front of them, when coming in to land. Whilst weather reports and aircraft instrumentation should be interpreted to abort the landing attempt, pilots ignored or didn’t look at this data when their focus was on the actions of pilots in front of them. Some planes were put in danger and some would have crashed.
The aviation industry has had a big learning curve to work out how big machines mix with human operators. The psychology at work in the dynamics of having pilots operate under various psychological pressures, is more involved than you may realise. For the sake of ‘saving face’ or avoiding discussions with superiors, sometimes pilots push on where they shouldn’t.
There are consequences to aborting a landing that the average passenger doesn’t know about and probably doesn’t want to hear about. There are cost factors and satisfaction of passengers involved. What consequences arise from a pilot deciding to abort a landing?
Consequences of aborting a landing:
- Delays for passengers
- Unhappy passengers
- Missed connections
- Upsetting arrival schedules
- Additional aircraft cost as aircraft expenses are based on engine air time and engine running time
- Additional fuel cost
- Possible consequences for roster time of pilots and crew
- Having to defend your actions to the company
To fly a few orbits (circles/ovals) to wait for better weather can stuff up things at an ariport for more planes than your own. Depending on the prognosis about bad weather duration, you would have to start considering deverting to another airport. Planes carry backup and reserve fuel but this inevitably has an end. You likely can’t circle around an airport for an hour… if the weather worsens, you might not have enough fuel to make it to a alternate airport so the decission to divert needs to be made early.
What psychology could make pilots risk the safety of the plane and passengers?
There is a host of human factors that the aviation industry is already aware about and nowadays pays close attention to. What is a hurdle for pilots to navigate through, are the same human urges that we explain as ‘short cuts’ in the teachings about persuasion and influence. Human being have a lot of decisions to make and we have developed certain nearly automatic responses based on information we receive.
There are 7 principles of influence and whilst we teach people how to use them to their advantage with ethically communicating, some of these triggers can have a dark side too.
The dark side of persuasion in aviation
There is more than one principle that can work against us in aviation, but in this post we’ll concentrate on the principle of Social Proof. This principles teaches us that people value the opinion of others. Whilst this is helpful most of the time (testimonials of others and their experiences) it can also go against us. Example: When enough people start running, you start running with them. When enough people stop in a street and look at a spot in the sky, traffic stops in that street within a minute!
When a pilot is considering their actions, they could be ‘seduced’ by realising what other pilots are doing, or have just done in that situation. Imagine 5 aircraft in a row, approaching an airport with poor but manageable weather. The weather is deteriorating and considering the available data on the weather (wind gusts, cross wind over the runway) the conditions are moving towards bringing the pilot and their aircraft to its limits.
However…. 4 aircraft are in front of them and they don’t stop their approach. They all land.
This could be because their aircraft has better capabilities (can handle more crosswind for example) or the weather is just a little better a few minutes in front of our aircraft. Research has shown that under those circumstances pilots have been tempted to push on to the determent of the safety of the plane.
We need to be aware of psychological limitations and temptations in aviation
We need pilots on planes, is the firm belief of this author. Handing over to AI seems like a poor decission any day of the week. However, we do need to realise pilots are human and decisions made for safety should be encouraged not punished. Especially in multi pilot crews, a discussion should be had about these decisions. The captain of course has the deciding vote but when all are in favour of aborting a landing, this takes the pressure off the captain. Any costs made in these actions, should be seen as an investment in the safety record of the airline and its reputation.