The Decision Making Process in Aviation

Flying is a series of events requiring you to make a continuous streams of decisions. One decision after another and the previous one influences the next one. Decisions like: We're low on fuel -> which is the nearest airport -> with the correct fuel type -> and so on.

These series of decisions happen throughout our whole lives, so that what we discuss here can be applied to other area's too.

Everyone flying an aircraft has, at one point or another in his or her flying career, had to make decisions about fuel, weather diversion or passenger well being. Basic pilot airmanship is one of the important factors and should be emphasised upon during pilot training.

It is interesting to know and to see how the human pilot interacts with the aircraft and it surroundings. Especially when the going get tough during night flights, turbulent or bad weather and other challenges in aviation.

Aviation Decision Making

The interrelating aviation events are between people (cockpit crew), aircraft, environment and all occur over time. We can devide them into 5 parts:

The Situation is the sum of: Pilot, Aircraft, Environment and the Operation. Any situation is therefore affected by these four interrelated items. This relationship is the awareness of the pilot. The higher this is, the safer he or she is when acting as a pilot.

ADM - Aeronautical Decision Making

This process is rather complex, but can be broken down into 6 well known parts suited for our explanation:

The above process DECIDE is not limited to aviation but can be applied on any situation on our lives. There are several items concerned with good decision making and safe flying. Pilot attitude, risk assessment skill, recognizing and handling stress, how to learn from and change behaviour and last but not least evaluating one's own decision making skills.

Emergencies

The DECIDE model is not very practical in case of an emergency. Decisions in emergencies must follow a shorter model with the unfortunate mnemonic DIE:

Now you know why practice and a good review of emergency procedures are crucial. In a real emergency you might not have the time to implement the DECIDE model. Instinctive reaction might be needed to get the situation under control. Training, training and more training on emergency procedures is necessary to counteract emergencies when needed.