May 2005-
I have long felt that the most significant dangers GA pilots face are related to their own judgment rather than their skill at the mechanics of flying. I’m sure I’m not alone among readers of this magazine in having lost a few acquaintances in aircraft accidents, the circumstances of which sadly reinforced this feeling.
Accordingly I have been perplexed by the nearly complete lack of judgment-related instruction in both private pilot and instrument training. Why is the most frequent cause of accidents and fatalities completely ignored in training that is supposed to produce “safe pilots?” Thus I was very interested when I learned of the King Risk Management Course instructional videos on exactly this subject.
The first installment (“Practical Risk Management for Pilots,” 2003) followed several interviews with the Kings in the aviation press in which they discussed risk/safety issues in GA and did their level best to dispel the popular delusion that flying is just as or nearly as safe as driving. Recently they made available a follow-on course, “Practical Risk Management for Weather.”
I had used King private pilot and instrument pilot video courses in preparation for the written tests and found them effective and entertaining, so I took the plunge (a bit north of $50 with shipping for each).
Videotapes are so Eighties; these courses come in sets of two CDs. PCs of all but Mesozoic vintage should have no trouble meeting the hardware and disk space requirements. Mac users like me are unfortunately not accommodated, but Senior Management graciously let me use her PC laptop. They’re password-protected and I’d guess you might have trouble sharing them with 50 of your closest friends.
Each course consists of an introductory segment followed by several lesson modules. Each module in turn is organized in up to six subsections; each of which has a short instructional video followed by a quiz of 1-4 questions. The user must answer the questions correctly—multiple tries are allowed—before completing the course and preferably before proceeding to the next subsection.
The first three modules of “Practical Risk Management for Pilots” each cover a particular aspect of risk assessment: admitting the risks and making the commitment to manage them, planning a flight and go/no-go decisions and in-flight decision making. Several of the questions in each section describe scenarios and then ask the viewer to choose which risk-related factors are at work and recommend a course of action. Note that the “correct” answer may be a matter of debate and each scenario may have more than one prudent alternative.
The fourth module brings it all together in a summary and emphasizes that risk-related decision making is the most important job of a pilot. The introduction, like King’s interviews, was fairly blunt at times. “When you’ve been in aviation for a long time like us, you get to know a lot of dead people,” was one of the more pithy comments, doubtless intended to startle but also rather funny.
I found the short instructional segments generally well-organized and effective at getting the intended points across to the viewer, and the flow between segments was logical. As with other King products, this one is mnemonic-intensive: “PAVE” for Pilot/Aircraft/enVironment/External pressure during preflight preparation and “CARE” for Consequences/Alternatives/Reality/External pressure for in-flight decisions.
Note the dual emphasis on “external pressures”—the strong motivation of pilot or passengers to reach the destination—which is rightly cited as a main contributor to poor decision making.
There were also several memorable points, such as, “Experience is a hard teacher: it gives the test first, and the lesson comes afterward.” “When the risk is vague and indefinite but the benefits are specific and tangible, people do not do a good job of making decisions.”
“Practical Risk Management for Weather” continues this formula but focuses in depth on weather-related risk factors and decision-making, cited by the Kings as the most significant contributor to accidents in cross-country flight. It conveys overall a significantly more thorough, comprehensive treatment of its subject than its predecessor, which is essentially an overview.
While I completed the first course wishing that a few more specific scenarios had been presented and discussed, “volume 2” offered a comparative abundance of such examples that touched on a satisfying variety of weather scenarios for both VFR and IFR flights, importantly including voice-overs of thought processes likely at work in both good and less-than-prudent decisions.
A number of these illustrate what I call “risk creep,” essentially the failure to acknowledge and react to changing weather conditions (“Reality”). A flight begins with all information indicating it can be completed safely, and the pilot’s mindset is thusly calibrated. Then un-forecast conditions are encountered that are at first surprising but benign, and only gradually deteriorate. The natural reaction is denial: “This wasn’t supposed to be here, it will certainly get better in a few miles if I just scoot under/over/around it.”
The point is, the risk is unexpected and presents itself in a way perceived by the pilot as small, individually “manageable” increments…until, seemingly all of a sudden, it isn’t, and you’re in the very situation that you were sure “would never happen to me.”
The Kings also make the important point that pilots are goal-oriented people with a background of achievement and perhaps less than the average amount of patience. While these attributes serve well in one’s business, they can contribute to some really goofy decision-making in airplanes. This attitude of “find a way to get it done” has been a success mechanism in my personal and professional life, but it can be deadly in the air if one doesn’t know when to turn it off.
The style of the “Practical Risk Management” courses is vintage King, complete with their trademark at-times-a-little-over-the-top jocularity. I personally find this endearing, and the marketplace seems to like it, too, although some pilots may not. For me it was $100 decidedly well spent, both thought-provoking and entertaining.
In my opinion “Practical Risk Management” is a long-overdue first step in a much neglected area of instruction and should be “required viewing” in pilot training programs. Completion of each course qualifies as the ground portion of an FAA Wings program phase, and pilots who have Avemco insurance are eligible for a 5% premium credit.
Kevin Moore’s day job is biotechnology research and development. He is a 1,700 hour instrument-rated private pilot who currently rents aircraft out of West Valley Flying Club at Palo Alto (PAO) and San Carlos (SQL) Calif.
