PearlPilot

Thanks for a great discussion. But I have to ask. As a CFI do you ever worry about students not making the right decision? In aviation, it is only experience that makes most of us learn a good lesson and thus be better decision makers in the future. Experience i.e. learning from mistakes also makes us better pilots no? So, who is more safe? A pilot who made a bad decision, walked away from it, and then learned a good lesson, or the pilot who also happens to be an excellent decision maker, but did not ever experience an incident? How do you "teach" students to be better decision makers. I remember in my early training days some of the decisions I made were just horrible. I am still a student pilot, and I believe that learning more about ADM beyond the chapter is an absolute necessity because I don't have that A-type personality.

shdw

This is a simple answer, when you ask your student a question like where are we, how do we contact them this tower, or anything else that causes the student to have to think and decide let it play out.

Too many CFIs, myself included when I started, will help a student to early. It is a learning environment, we let them screw up a landing but when they point 30 degrees off heading to go to the airport do you let them fly around for 15 minutes looking? No usually we are on a time crunch and just say, oh well it is over there but don't worry we can do that next time, eventually there isn't a next time.

To help them you can give them things to do, in this instance tell them to stop and circle or go over the 5 C's every time they can't find the airport. But continue to ask questions aimed to help them think the way they need to so as to successfully make a decision. This at least gives them practices and forces them to use their brains when they fly and not sit there like a slug knowing that if they look dumb for more than 10 seconds the CFI will just do it for them.

Edit: As long as they aren't going to violate you, kill you, or are getting frustrated beyond the point of being able to realistically learn. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs will give you a good start point for knowing what things will close off your students perceptual field and prevent them from learning.

shdw

Should have thrown this out earlier but here: AC 60-22 Aeronautical Decision Making

III Corps

Don't know so much about it being philosophy but I try to make most decisions on the ground. Waiting until you are in the event gives you at best a 50/50 chance of getting it right. During the event there are time pressures, etc which can lead to rushed decisions. The problem often seems to be 1) not making decisions early or 2) not sticking with decisions. Most have min fuel limits (:30-:45min fuel to be on the ground). But how many stick to that limit? So we get to red light and yellow light rules. Red.. you never violate and yellow.. well, those are conditional. And the yellow light attitude will get you in trouble.

Obviously you can't brief for every possible event but how often are we faced with real decision-critical events. Seldom. The problem more often seems to be botching the routine events, continuing bad approaches, trying to 'make it work' when it should be obvious it ISN'T working. And too often we walk away from a bad event with the wrong lesson.

Pilot B is hot and high but continues the approach, floats, lands long but gets it stopped. Instead of realizing that may have been his only free pass, he thinks, "I made it" and that is what goes into his personal data base. Next time he is hot and high, "Hey.. seen this before and I made it. I will continue." But this time he has an unreported 10kt tailwind.