Stress

Flying Safety, August, 2006

One of our stories this month says, "They are called 'human factors' for a reason. They aren't called 'heavy-pilot-only factors' or 'over-50-years-old-male factors' or 'applies-only-to-sub-standard-pilots factors.'"

We're looking at human factors in some stressful situations, not all of them life threatening, but all likely to cause a certain level of "pucker factor." A sampling:

"Tower called us back within three minutes and told us they had the entire bird. It had been killed and roasted by our No. 2 engine's 900-degree-C exhaust."

"I have always looked at pilot training as one big, stressful, sweaty game. Some lucky days you win, some days you lose."

"I'm a fighter pilot, after all, and fighter pilots don't wimp out and whine about not being able to fly because they don't feel 100 percent."

"[I]t was sheer luck that I had enough blood left in the grey matter to command some form of anti-G straining maneuver."

"The radios were going non-stop, and my student was unable to find a break in the radios to make his final turn call. Halfway through the final turn I noted the airspeed was higher than it should be for the power setting. I was analyzing this in the turn, but not rolled out on final, when the RSU called, 'Final go around, no gear.'"

"Here we were, on three engines, low on fuel due to the leak, and approaching the end of a 26-hour day...."

"For pilots--who have been identified as having one of the most stressful occupations--on-the-job stress may occur when operational demands exceed the pilot's physical capacity and/or mental capacity. In these situations, researchers have assumed that pilots with 'an overload of information' have an increased risk of stress-related performance errors."

We hope you'll find some remedies to combat these errors.