Pilots’ “Dynamic Situational Awareness” Key to Understanding Safe Decision-Making During Unstable Approach
Toronto, Ontario (PRWEB) July 12, 2013 -- Runway excursions, following unstable landing approaches, have been the most common type of aviation incidents. Unfortunately, the tragedy of Asiana Flight 214 underscores this statistic. Each event stands as a reminder of the complexities and risks involved when people interface with machinery and technology. Presage Group Inc. researchers have been examining the psychological and social dynamics unique to relationship and the threats they pose to public safety. Recently, they have been working with the Flight Safety Foundation to explore the factors underlying pilot decision making during unstable approaches and landings and develop mitigating strategies or improve training.
Presage has just released the results of its in-depth global study that sheds significant light upon this critical airline safety issue. Entitled, “Why Go–around Policies are Ineffective: The Psychology of Decision Making During Unstable Approaches,” the study uses Presage’s proprietary Dynamic Situational Awareness Model to investigate why, in 97% of cases involving an unstable approach and landing state, pilots fail to follow proper policies and procedures.
“Our survey data, based on 2,348 pilot-reported unstable approach events, paint a very distinct and troubling picture of the differences in pilot decision making between those pilots who follow their go-around policies and those who do not,” states Dr. Martin Smith, lead psychologist on the study. “A striking variety of psychological factors come into play in ways that compromise fight safety. Our study shows the complex influences of personal, crew, company and aviation industry cultural factors that combine to foster unsafe decision making during approach and landing.”
About Presage Group, Inc.
Founded in 2000, Presage Group, Inc., is a privately-held company whose technology reaches into the workplace to predict human behavior with a diagnostic tool that targets the invisible threat of behavioral risk. This new methodology reduces workplace errors by identifying and mitigating the psychological and social factors that lead to risk attitudes and behaviors. The company presented it's groundbreaking paper entitled "Why are go-around policies ineffective? The psychology of decision making during unstable approaches" at the Flight Safety Foundation's International Air Safety Summit in October 2012. For more information, visit http://www.presagegroup.com
Michael Sproule, Presage Group, Inc., http://www.presagegroup.com, +1 6472815399, [email protected]
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