How do you "teach" SA?

[Duchess_Driver]

Licence holder wanting to do a CPL (EASA) struggles with situational awareness.

Have tried the usual stuff to develop an understanding of his environment, but still falling short. He's not stupid, quite the opposite in fact.

Any thoughts?

[foxmoth]

Probably stuff you have tried, but emphasise keeping ahead of the aircraft - know what airspace is coming up, picking up things like airfield information from other calls before needing to ask yourself, knowing in advance and setting the next frequency before you need it, get calls in nice and early and use what you hear on the r/t as another set of eyes to build a picture of where other aircraft are.
A good example to quote of just what SA is is the one of the racing driver Fangio - he was leading in a race when he slowed right down, came round the corner and there was a big crash that he would have piled into if still at racing speed, when asked how he knew, he said that he noticed the crowd faces were not where they should have been - looking for him coming round the course, but facing the other way - now that is SA!

[Runaway Gun]

More time chatting about stuff in the coffee room, classroom, broom room etc. An informal setting is often the best place to pick stuff up.

Best avoid the Pprune room....

[Whopity]

SA, Situational Awareness or Spacial Awareness is something that some people have in abundance whilst others have very little, it has no correlation with intelligence. It is effectively one of man's primeval instincts. Teaching it is exceedingly difficult; you can point out factors that the student needs to be aware of, but if they fail to conclude anything useful from the information received, then there is not much you can do. You cannot conceive what you cannot perceive.

[ifitaintboeing]

In a Big Airline they talk about three levels of Situational Awareness:

NOTICE - UNDERSTAND - THINK AHEAD

In the example above, Fangio first achieved the lowest level of Situational Awareness by NOTICING that the crowd were not watching him.

He then UNDERSTOOD that, because they weren't watching him, there must be something else drawing their attention around the next corner.

He then THOUGHT AHEAD; if he continues at this speed he is likely to hit whatever the crowd are looking at so he decides to slow down to give himself more time.

There is actually a level below NOTICE level which is ... NOT NOTICING. Had Fangio not noticed the crowd in the above example he would have continued at speed around the corner and had an accident.

ifitaint...

[foxmoth]

I think this is what you need to analyse with this student - which of the three stages mentioned here is he falling down on, once you have identified that it might be easier to sort out.

[ifitaintboeing]

Good pilots will use periods of low workload to build SA. An example I use is:

You decide to tune in early to your destination airfield whilst in the cruise (LOW WORKLOAD). They provide the surface wind to another aircraft - you write it down (gathering information - NOTICE).

You look at the wind direction in relation to the landing runway and see that it provides you with a 17 knot crosswind - the aircraft's maximum demonstrated crosswind (UNDERSTAND).

You plan ahead - HOW will you carry out a go-around if required, where might you divert more into wind and review your fuel required and weather for alternate (THINK AHEAD).

Since this has been carried out during a period of low workload, this will allow more capacity later on. You can identify periods of low workload before you go - where are you going to build your SA?

Duchess driver, you can use practical examples in flight of how you utilise periods of low workload in this manner to build your own SA.

ifitaint...

[mad_jock]

That's quite low level SA though.

I don't know how you would teach though for example.

A FO says just before you ask them to increase the rate of decent.

Just increasing rate of decent so they don't shaft us with that heavy coming in from the North.

The being able to build up a mental picture of the traffic around on frequency and even to have a listen to the next sector as well to start playing the "approach game of chess" just by listening I haven't found a way to teach. They either have it or they don't some you only have to do something once and they get what you doing and the reason why you do it and others never get it.

Same with asking for daft things in certain situations. They don't realise why you can ask for them one day and not another. And why you get a thankful ATCO one day, and a :mad: off he hinted tone of voice the next. With exactly the same thing said.

[Genghis the Engineer]

What a fascinating question. I've not yet had to face this problem in a big way, but can make some suggestions from how I think that I developed adequate SA myself.

I suggest that this might be developed by setting a series of exercises, where possible ground based, designed each to develop individual aspects of SA. Then, in a similar manner to teaching basic flying, eventually aim to combine them into creating a bigger picture. So, here are some suggestions...

- Sit at an airfield with a scanner and photocopied local chart, sketching paths of aircraft based upon their radio calls.

- Whilst flying or driving monitor trees / clouds / smoke / crops... to try and maintain a continuous knowledge of wind direction.

- Watching other airceaft, keep trying to guess what they'll do next, and why?

I've not tried this, but it seems to be an emulation of how I learned SA.

G

[mad_jock]

Actually an advanced driving course might help with a technique.

They make you go through a speaking while you drive thing which to be honest is a right pain in the backside but does getting you vocalising all the risks.

I do find myself thinking what we used to have to say.

[2close]

MJ beat me to the punch on that one but I concur whole-heartedly,

Advanced driving is an excellent way of developing SA through vocalising what you are seeing before you get to a potential hazard and what you are doing about it.

Reading the road well in advance puts you in the position of avoiding potentially hazardous situations.

You may sound like a nutter but it is a good way of applying NUTA. :)

[Big Pistons Forever]

Duchess Driver

Ask the student "What should you be doing next" every time nothing is happening. Lack of SA is really a lack of anticipation. It means the student is not thinking ahead. So ask the question lots and pretty soon he/she will start anticipating things without prompting.

[Duchess_Driver]

Without the formality I've tried all of these at some stage or another. Yes, he is low experience but meets requirements for CPL flight test and has been given the "minimum" training requirements by others but is still falling short of what I assess as CPL standard.

It seems to be a more common problem lately that 'hour building' is undertaken with little thought to the development of the pilot, confidence and skill set.

Thanks all

DD

[jayteeto]

In military flying training, CFS looked at SA and and how to score it correctly on debrief. It used to be called airmanship as well. It is so difficult to assess and, more importantly, teach. Everyone has some SA, JUST ON DIFFERENT LEVELS!
As an instructor, you can do one useful thing for a student:

Teach good workload management as described above, pre select radios, do cruise checks at times of low workload etc etc. This releases vital brain cells, leaving the maximum amount for SA. It works, I was that man.

Otherwise, if a person cannot hack it, you have to accept another career may be needed. Not everyone can be a pilot, intelligent or not.

[ACJcentral]

The OP asked, 'How Do You Teach SA'?

Not one of the above posts has really addressed that so far, in terms of practical teaching.

A starting point could be to find an instructor who knows what SA is, can define it and fully understands how and when to teach it.

[bylgw]

The trouble with vocalising everything is that they can't be listening whilst talking.

Having spent an hour in the circuit listening, in excruciating detail, to blogs not actually 'nailing it' and not really listening to me or other traffic.

[Genghis the Engineer]

The OP asked, 'How Do You Teach SA'?

Not one of the above posts has really addressed that so far, in terms of practical teaching.

A starting point could be to find an instructor who knows what SA is, can define it and fully understands how and when to teach it.

So presumably you have a better understanding than the collection of experienced professional pilots posting above.

How would you teach it?

G

[OpenCirrus619]

I don't know how much experience your CPL student has in the type of aircraft (s)he is learning in.

My own personal experience is that as I got more "stick time" I had to think less about flying the aircraft - which freed up more slots in my brain for situational awareness.

Don't know if this has any relevance to your student - just my 2p worth.

OC619

[jayteeto]

Flying experience definitely improves SA, but only to a certain degree. As I alluded to above, one way to TEACH it (or teach a person not to overload, same thing), is to use repetitive checklists that cover all the trivial issues. The timing of the execution of said checklists is the bit that you can teach. For me, at turning points we used to carry out bloody millions of checks and increase the workload. I would split those lists and get lower grade students to do them halfway down navigation legs. Radio calls or weather gathering would be done then as well.
I would try and produce a consistent workload, rather than a fluctuating one.
This doesn't always work, throwing more hours at the student sometimes helps, there has to be a point where you say STOP. In the military we did it earlier, because there were 10 more whizkids waiting to take up the place. In the civvie world it can be difficult to turn away money from your school. :\

[BBK]

ACJcentral

I await your explanation. I'm no expert but having gone through a command course, which is mostly about SA, I'd say keep reviewing the situation. Gather info from whatever sources you have available. Always be ready to reassess what you believe to be true. I had a student who attempted a rejoin onto the wrong airfield and I debriefed him that he should not jump to conclusions ie just because you want it be the destination doesn't make it so! Relating back to the OP this particular was highly intelligent and a lovely old school chap to boot.

It's a nebulous concept in some respects and I think the Advanced Driving test is a good analogy although I've never taken the course myself.

Of course, one hopes that as a student becomes proficient that will free up spare capacity so that he/she can take in the big picture. As others have said discuss with him various scenarios. Anyway, I hope the student referred to by the OP makes it with suitable training.

[ACJcentral]

So presumably you have a better understanding than the collection of experienced professional pilots posting above.

Ah presumption, the cause of many an accident! Should I presume then that in relation to SA you place great importance and value on experience and the holding of a professional licence?.

KLM certainly did, well at least until Sunday, March 27, 1977 they did, after trying to phone Captain Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten to investigate an accident he had just caused.

As a new instructor Genghis you should be able to give us the benefit of your course notes on SA together with a brief summary of how to teach it.

[mad_jock]

As a new instructor Genghis you should be able to give us the benefit of your course notes on SA together with a brief summary of how to teach it.

Its not covered in The flight instructors course.

Its also not covered in the CRMI course.

And its also not covered in the CORE course for TRI.

Not covered in the Line trainers course either.

To be honest you sound like another walter mitty who posts in instructors thinking that they have a clue when they don't.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Well said Jock.

G

[ACJcentral]

To be honest MJ you sound like one of those people who think name calling is part of logical argument and discussion or comes as an entitlement for being an experienced professional pilot. Forgive me if I choose not take part in such juvenile behaviour, not that there would be any need as I am sure everyone else can work out for themselves what you are.

I haven't had the benefit of being able to read every companies training syllabus for the various courses you mention, you obviously work for the CAA and have read them all.

However to fill in the gaps in your knowledge i would refer you to

CAP 737 Crew Resource Management (CRM) Training
Guidance For Flight Crew, CRM Instructors (CRMIS) and CRM Instructor-Examiners (CRMIES)

The purpose of this publication is to provide a comprehensive guidance document on Crew Resource Management (CRM), from a UK perspective and in this document you will find 34 references to SA, which you claim isn’t part of the CRM syllabus.

This document is also a good starting point for anyone interested in finding out about SA which is a part of threat and error management (TEM) and is required to be taught for all Part FCL licences.

All FI course candidates are required to have passed the professional exams which includes human factors and which of course includes SA, TEM and aviation decision making. The course teaches the candidate to teach, its not supposed to re teach any of the technical subjects so therefore HF may not be specifically mentioned in the syllabus!

On tbe completion of the course the FI is supposed to be able to teach all the subjects associated with the licence being taught. All PPL instructors should be able to teach any aspect of human performance and limitations that is required for the part fcl licence.

[Genghis the Engineer]

We can all look stuff up online. To my certain knowledge Jock lives and breaths this stuff - as do I.

What are your qualifications and understanding of SA and how to teach it? Perhaps you coukd say something constructive before we all put you ignore.

G

[mad_jock]

That's just confirmed my suspicion.

Your current log in can go and join your other walter mitty log in on my ignore list.

You obviously have zero clue about the current course structure or content. The term situational awareness is used and referred to as a good thing but as such there is no syllabus for teaching it.

And please note I won't be seeing your reply just like I don't see your other posts under your other login.

[Conan the Vulgarian]

Can you give specific examples of what he's struggling with, or times he has fallen short?

I agree to some extent with what was said earlier about it being down to flying experience - the more experience you have, the lower your workload becomes in a given situation, and the less likely you are to succumb to fixation on one task to the detriment of noticing what else is going on. Proper planning helps as well of course - the better you've prepared, the less you have to think about at the time, and the more you can take in what's going on around you.

If that's what you mean by a lack of SA (ie. that he fixates on tasks and doesn't seem to have the spare mental capacity to notice other things at the same time), the only way I suppose you can teach it is to encourage him to divide his attention widely, to keep scanning through different tasks, doing things a little bit at a time. It may be that encouraging this actually diminishes his ability to cope at first, and that you have to deliberately overload him somewhat by "distracting" him from one task to ask him to attend to another.

It's an interesting question though, and I'll be keeping an eye on this discussion to see if you can elaborate on exactly what you mean by a lack of SA, and what other more experienced FIs think can be done to improve it.

[ACJcentral]

What MJ said was:



Its not covered in The flight instructors course.

Its also not covered in the CRMI course.

And its also not covered in the CORE course for TRI.

Not covered in the Line trainers course either.

Which is totally wrong, below for instance is Globals CRMI Course

Global Air Training
CRMI COURSE
Day Three
Delegate practical delivery (info processing, situational awareness, implications & management of conflict, decision making, workload, leadership)
Case study analysis linking to Human error & TEM

Any pilot, instructor or otherwise, who thinks SA is not part of CRM should not be anywhere near an aircraft.

Genghis, you would do well to spend some time on the internet trying to find out what SA is rather than advising students to use an airfield scanner, unless you are a stand up comedian as well.

[ACJcentral]

This is what a FI is supposed to be qualified to teach Genghis

From a PPL syllabus

Judgement and decision making

concepts of pilots' judgement
psychological attitudes
behavioural aspects
risk assessment
development of situational awareness

[mad_jock]

If you do a search for "NASA pilot situational awareness" you get a heap of hits from current research.

This message is hidden because ACJcentral is on your ignore list.

And the utter rubbish stops.

Anyway

I will throw this in

www.satechnologies.com/Papers/pdf/SATrainingchapter.pdf

[ACJcentral]

Referencing other material on the internet, splendid, there you are MJ you could be an instructor after all. All you need to to do now is loose the juvenile attitude.

Two excellent references.

Welcome to 2013 Genghis and the internet, available in virtually every UK pilots home and the greatest advance in education since the dip pen.

[BBK]

ACJCentral

You were the only person to post a snotty response and now you're lecturing the rest of us on CRM! Oh the irony.;)

BBK

[ACJcentral]

You were the only person to post a snotty response and now you're lecturing the rest of us on CRM! Oh the irony

And of course your response, personally directed at me, with no bearing on the discussion, is an example of first class CRM! Oh the irony

[BBK]

ACJCentral

I've reread your original post and yes I think it was "snotty". Purely my own highly subjective view of course. However, what I and everyone else did was offer some ideas to the OP. Nothing more or less. Not good enough for you then that's your concern. I sincerely hope the OP derived some benefit from our input.

BBK

[fwjc]

ACJCentral

Whereabouts do you instruct? I like your direct approach and it's clear you know more than the other guys on here. I'm guessing the reason you're not answering the OP's question directly is to encourage them to find their own answer. I'm not an instructor, yet, but if it is the case that most instructors don't know how to teach SA, I'd like to be able to learn from one that does. PM's okay with me.

Edited to add:

Can't keep this up, I don't like pretending. I tried to find out where ACJCentral teaches so I can avoid it, but no luck. I'm astonished that people can be so confrontational and rude in a completely unprovoked scenario. GtE and mj are both well respected in here (even if mj can be a bit brusque) and tend to try to give decent answers to questions. If there is a difference in interpretation or a little mistake made in an explanation, that's human. To try to tear someone apart for it is childish, and very rude. Both ACJCentral and pull what seem to be indulging in trollishness, and that's a shame since it doesn't help answer the OP's question.

To the OP, I'm not an instructor yet, but I have had cause to examine SA for certain commercial enterprises. In my admittedly limited experience, spare capacity is the foundation. Then you can ask the question about what's happening next, what's going on out of the window, what's the implication of this next event, how can I position / request / configure to best achieve my aims etc.
Good luck for you and your student.

[ACJcentral]

The OP asked, 'How Do You Teach SA'?

Not one of the above posts has really addressed that so far, in terms of practical teaching.

A starting point could be to find an instructor who knows what SA is, can define it and fully understands how and when to teach it.

Snotty? BBK you must be very over sensitive if you think the above is 'snotty'.

You said on your earlier post

ACJcentral I await your explanation

Funny how it wasnt snotty then but now has suddenly become snotty. Perhaps youve suffered some ego bruising too?

I like your direct approach and it's clear you know more than the other guys on here. I'm guessing the reason you're not answering the OP's question directly is to encourage them to find their own answer.



FWCJ-Yes thank you-you do seem to have excellent SA in deducing that, I just needed to deal with the forum bullies first of all!

Competent instructors should already know the answer and be able to debate it. You will notice the bullies are all very quick to criticise other inexperienced instructors who ask questions about EASA requirements but when the tables are turned on them in regard to essential knowledge they behave like 6 year olds. It makes me ashamed to be in aviation.

I am off for a few days, some of us actually do fly aircraft for a living!

[Armchairflyer]

Some sources cited in the chapter on situation awareness in the book "Safety at the Sharp End" by Flin, O'Connor, and Crichton (Ashgate, 2008):
- Appendix 6 of CAP 737 has already been mentioned (http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP737.PDF) .
- Banbury, S., Dudfield, H., Hormann, J., Soll, H. (2007) FASA: Development and validation of a novel measure to assess the effectiveness of commercial airline pilot situation awareness training. International Journal of Aviation Psychology, Vol. 17, pp. 131-152
- Endsley, M., Robertson, M. (2000) Training for situation awareness in individuals and teams. In M. Endsley, D. Garland (eds.) Situation Awareness. Analysis and Measurement. Mahwah, NJ: LEA,
Manuscript apparently available online via the link cited by MJ: www.satechnologies.com/Papers/pdf/SATrainingchapter.pdf (http://www.pprune.org/www.satechnologies.com/Papers/pdf/SATrainingchapter.pdf) .
- Jones, D., Endsley, M. (1996) Sources of situation awareness errors in aviation. Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine, Vol. 67, pp. 507-512
- Prince, C. (2000) Guidelines for situation awareness training. Report to FAA.
Available online: http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/afs/afs200/branches/afs210/training_aids/media/saguides.doc .

By and large, according to the book by Flin et al., it seems that the golden nugget in teaching SA has not yet been found: "Training in situation awareness, for example as part of crew resource management courses [...], tends to relate mainly in demonstrating its importance in maintaining safe operations, to providing information on how the brain processes and stores information, explaining models of situation awareness and the factors influencing this. Tips may be provided on how to maintain higher attention in particular work situations or tasks. [...] There have been few robust studies conducted to test whether there are long-term differences in performance relating to situation awareness training" (p. 32). One such evaluation study (besides the journal article by Banbury et al., 2007) can apparently be found here: http://essai.nlr.nl/downloads/ESSAI_Training_Dayton.pdf .

[Rithalic]

I've followed this thread for a while and waited to see anything that might assist and help the OP's actual question. There has been some useful info and some concepts that might assist. There has of course been the usual forum based back and forth slanging as well.

I'd add that what I've found assist my own SA and what I use to develop my students is as follows.

Lets use the example of the visual circuit.

First of all a student must have a clear mental model of what they are trying to achieve. By this i mean if for example they are doing circuits they must understand how the circuit is flown and where and when to make certain calls.

To start with their capacity is most likely going to be totally absorbed by actually flying the circuit themselves and therefore I am there to keep watch and highlight other traffic and RT they have missed by focusing on flying purely. As they get better developed and start to fly more accurately and get the A/C stable earlier and understand the RT calls more definitely I can ease back and let them deal with more. Their SA increases the more they understand what is going on around them as a result of what they assume other traffic is going to do around them.

Its has been highlighted already that SA will improve with exp and this is very very true. My own SA improved dramatically as a result of becoming an IRI and having to pay specific attention to other IFR traffic. Thinking back to when I was a student and all I knew was the profile I was flying I gave little to no thought as to other IFR traffic. Now I have to manage my own single engine a/c relative to MEP and Jet a/c and have to negotiate my holding and approach time. There is no substitute to exp but TEM training allows us to highlight to the student what we might do in the case of.

My simple advice which follows other advice would be keep asking, what can you do now? What did you just hear on the radio? Where is that other traffic now? Where will he be shortly? What does that mean to us? Are we likely to be delayed at all? If so, is there anything we can do about it?

For example we're in the circuit and we've heard IFR traffic call established on final. So we can expect they'll be given priority over us. Well lets tell Tower that we can do a short approach or that we're downwind and expect to Orbit for separation. It's all about getting the best out of our situation/ managing ourselves relative to the traffic around us.


If your guy is struggling with SA I would suggest that the principle problem is not his SA. It is probably that he is focused too much on his own A/C. And this is probably because he is NOT TRIMMED and therefore spending his mental resources flying as opposed to monitoring the environment around him.

Firstly free up his resources by making sure he is flying accurately and trimmed. This will allow then a profile to be flown with minimum attention and then capacity can be directed towards the environment around him.

[mad_jock]

By and large, according to the book by Flin et al., it seems that the golden nugget in teaching SA has not yet been found:

That is pretty common with the NASA stuff as well.

There are references to the 4 pillars of SA. Terrain, wx, position, communications.

But to me this misses out time and systems.

But there is also an x factor which to be honest I think is linked to how many times you have scared yourself or had to deal with a situation that with hine sight was avoidable. The difference between "don't put your hand near the fire" and tears and screams when an ember gets them. The second situation is usually the end of the kid going near the fire.

Maybe the best way of teaching SA is giving the student enough rope to screw up but not enough to hang themselves. Its certainly something I do with FO's to the point of letting get into the position of requiring a go-around. In a couple of cases the go-around was their first real one outside doing one for training purposes. But I am lucky that we have empty sectors into 1 movement an hour regional airports where I can do this with out scaring the hell out of the punters.

And I would go with the not trimmed idea. 99% of issues with PPL students are due to lessons 3-9 not being taught properly and understood. A couple of hours revision of the basics away from the circuit maybe the cure.

[Pull what]

Notice how MJ leaves out the next line from that quote:

"Training in situational awareness for example as part of CREW RESOURCE MANAGEMENT COURSES"

Perhaps he forgot that he previously said that SA was not part of CRM courses. Selective memory loss or yet another example of erroneous opinion?

[Pull what]

And I would go with the not trimmed idea.

If your guy is struggling with SA I would suggest that the principle problem is not his SA. It is probably that he is focused too much on his own A/C. And this is probably because he is NOT TRIMMED and therefore spending his mental resources flying as opposed to monitoring the environment around him.
Are you seriously telling us that poor SA is down to poor trimming?

[fwjc]

'fessed up on previous post. Hate trolls and didn't want to become one.

[Pull what]

'fessed up on previous post. Hate trolls and didn't want to become one.

Why ever not, you've gone to so much trouble and seem to have a natural talent for it.

[fwjc]

Thanks, but two posts is not a great deal of effort. However, I dislike dishonesty.

I am interested to see more considered discussion on SA, how it is identified and how it can be improved. I am assuming that nobody's SA is necessarily perfect, and that there is always room to make it better.

[Pull what]

ACJCentral

Whereabouts do you instruct? I like your direct approach and it's clear you know more than the other guys on here. I'm guessing the reason you're not answering the OP's question directly is to encourage them to find their own answer. I'm not an instructor, yet, but if it is the case that most instructors don't know how to teach SA, I'd like to be able to learn from one that does. PM's okay with me.

Edited to add:

Can't keep this up, I don't like pretending. I tried to find out where ACJCentral teaches so I can avoid it, but no luck. I'm astonished that people can be so confrontational and rude in a completely unprovoked scenario. GtE and mj are both well respected in here (even if mj can be a bit brusque) and tend to try to give decent answers to questions. If there is a difference in interpretation or a little mistake made in an explanation, that's human. To try to tear someone apart for it is childish, and very rude. Both ACJCentral and pull what seem to be indulging in trollishness, and that's a shame since it doesn't help answer the OP's question.

To the OP, I'm not an instructor yet, but I have had cause to examine SA for certain commercial enterprises. In my admittedly limited experience, spare capacity is the foundation. Then you can ask the question about what's happening next, what's going on out of the window, what's the implication of this next event, how can I position / request / configure to best achieve my aims etc.
Good luck for you and your student.

However, I dislike dishonesty.


You dont like dishonesty? That's quite funny coming from you. Have a look at what you posted highlighted in bold type, some of it you went to the trouble as adding it as an edit. If that's not dishonest I am not sure what is?

I appreciate that both of them have been busy on the PMs that’s fairly obvious but if if you want to command any sort of respect yourself try and support what is correct rather than individuals, the discussion is supposed to be about SA, it shouldn't be about massaging the ego of individuals.

You mentioned MJ made a little mistake, well MJ made a very big mistake and was totally incorrect in posting that SA is not a part of CRM, SA is in fact the very basis of CRM as any professional pilot would be fully aware of. MJ can never accept being proven wrong, he did exactly the same with me in regard to the sending of first solos when he stated that he never watches a first solo or that a first solo student never needs to be de briefed. Instead of being able to argue his views he has resort to name calling and abuse and as we have seen in this discussion putting people on ignore and then posting the ignore message for all to see, do you really think this is how professional pilots and instructors should behave?

Good CRM includes being able to admit when you are wrong, individuals who cannot admit when they are wrong are a liability in aviation, apart from being a nightmare to work with.

Getting back to the actual thread for those who are genuinely interested and not involved in ego protection, no one I believe has mentioned threat and error management (TEM) which is an important part of SA. The first part of TEM is being able to accept that all human beings make errors, the next part is about managing that error. If you look at the example of the circuit given by Rithalic that aspect of SA is missing, in fact his version of SA is entirely dependent on the use of RT which is only one small part of SA.

[Rithalic]

Far be it for me to point out other's lack of situational awareness but I believe the original question was relevant to how to improve a single crew pilots SA.

No names but I might point out that I did indeed reference TEM and also with reference to my earlier example of the visual circuit i referenced my case as an example, whilst previously expressing that the student had a clear mental model of what he should be flying and was then presumably flying so without any Errors on his/her part and also what others should be flying around him.

The question was asked whether poor SA is down to poor trimming. Well I can only humbly speak from my own exp but whenever i've picked up a student who is struggling to deal with the bigger picture i've crossed my arms and said "I have control" and inevitable the aircraft then deviates from whatever attitude that was previously being held on to. This has quickly highlighted any handling errors; which clearly sap capacity.

Simply the student was expending too much of their own resource focusing on handling the A/C. Why? Because they were not trimmed.

Lets spend a minute and define situational awareness in its simplest terms. It is awareness of the situation you are in. I would argue then that any persons adding to this thread that aren't adding positive advice on how to increase SA to the ab-initio student, (even if it is in reference to being aware of RT around you) haven't quite grasped the situation and are therefore lacking in SA. Let alone CRM.

I can only wish that I had the time, energy and experience to write a tome on SA but like most I can only add my exp to a reasonable question and give the best possible advice I can from the experience I have. I hope to the OP that it might be of some help if you find your student struggling for the reasons I've highlighted. If not then I hope that the many thousands of hours amongst us might have some better insight.

Best,

Rith

[mad_jock]

As these are anonymous forums the origins of the contributions may be opposite to what may be apparent. In fact the press may use it, or the unscrupulous, or sciolists*, to elicit certain reactions

Rithalic I will just remind you of what's written at the bottom.

I don't have thousands of hours instruction under my belt as I moved on to flying the line after 1.5 years of ppl instructing.

But with my limited experience of a thousand hours instructing PPL and later experience line training etc in a manual TP you are talking sense. Be you flying a SEP at 90knts or TP at 250knts.

[fwjc]

Duchess Driver, have you found anything useful in amongst the cat-fights? Did you try any of the suggestions posted and did any of them work? How is your CPL student progressing?

Pull what - you actually made me chuckle.
Dislike of dishonesty led to openly coming clean within a day. If I was truly dishonest I would have kept up the ruse or at least kept it to PMs. But watching you and ACJCentral on here has certainly been a learning experience with respect to CRM.

[Pull what]

Nice to see there is a return to actually debating the OPs question. Human Factors is a very important subject that deserves much more attention than it presently gets, especially in PPL training.

Rithalic, what you are really talking about is skill based error and and distraction. Not trimming is the error and the effect of it is the distraction. You and MJ are quite right to suggest that not having the a/c trimmed may contribute to lack of SA but there are many more distractions of a much more serious nature.

For instance the distraction of a short runway causing loss of SA and flying into promulgated obstructions clearly visible on the approach.

For instance the distraction of an engine failure after take off causing the pilot to loose control, stall and crash into a housing estate.

[Duchess_Driver]

As interesting as most of these replies are, the musings and positioning does tend to distract attention from my original question.

For those who don't know, I am not a new instructor - I have a 'few' hours under my belt and a few qualifications too!

The reason I asked originally was because I had tried all of the tricks I could think of, most of the suggestions given here and a few from other sources.

The student is 'evaluating the amount of time he has available' so there has been little progress anyhow.

Once again, thanks for your valuable contributions.

[mad_jock]

Must admit that thought had gone through my head as well.

If dutchess can't sort them....


What are they falling over on?

What type of person are they?

Are they and engineering/science type or arty?

[stoneage]

I usually get my students to prepare well before the lesson. Armchair fly before the flight and give him/her scenarios of what could happen in our lesson.

If the student fails at that, then maybe with the help of diagrams?

Maybe give him a quiz?

And again in flight, ask questions. Hammer the message home. I guess the key thing here is repetition and the understanding that everyone learns differently.

[BBK]

Hi DD

Good luck with your student. Hope he/she makes it, they certainly have a dedicated instructor.

From some old notes of mine, admittedly it's a list of what's required not how to teach it!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The pilot is -

Is aware of the aircraft's geographical/system status

Is able to identify threats to the safety of the a/c

Sees the "big picture"

Is able to disseminate incoming info and take appropriate action

Monitors, reviews and discusses appropriately

Actively seeks accurate info from all available resources and considers all available options

Acknowledges the presence of human performance limitations and their negative effect on decision making.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now if I can just do all that in the sim I'll be happy.:O

[Pull what]

The pilot is -

Fully aware that situation awareness starts in the briefing room not at the a/c

Full briefed before flight on what is expected to happen and what could happen.

Proactive in engaging the whole crew to bond as a team

Is aware of the aircraft's geographical position on the ground or in the air and where the a/c is going to or where the a/c could go to in the event of any abnormal or emergency situation

Is aware of the current system status and how it could change

Is risk aware and able to identify and deal with threats and errors which may affect the safety of the a/c

Sees the "big picture" and is able to project that forward and predict how that could change

Is able to disseminate incoming info and and after evaluation takes appropriate action

Monitors,, discusses, decides and reviews appropriately(always review after a decision)

Actively seeks accurate info from all available resources and considers all available options.

Acknowledges the presence of human performance limitations and their possible negative effect on decision making.

Communicates clearly in a timely fashion with all crew members as and when appropriate

Good luck in the Sim-I always need it!

[Charlecote]

I've been watching this thread with both interest and amazement. Interest because I am involved in the teaching of Human Performance & Limitations, including CRM at both PPL and professional level. Amazed because this is supposed to be a professional flight instructors and examiners forum and yet no one seems to be able to answer a very simple question- HOW DO YOU TEACH SA?

Lets be very clear about this - ANY current UK FI should be able to teach Human Performance & Limitations which includes Cockpit Resource Management. Situation awareness and threat error management are a major part of this.

This discussion has not been helped in any way by Mad Jock posting the following in regard to SA.

Its not covered in The flight instructors course.

Its also not covered in the CRMI course.

And its also not covered in the CORE course for TRI.

Not covered in the Line trainers course either.

All of the above statements are completely wrong as any current competent instructor should know and any professional airline pilot must know!

CRM training is required for all EASA licences and it is an essential part of initial and recurrent training in the airline industry.

CAP 720 Flight Crew Training: Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) and Line-Oriented Flight Training (LOFT)
Chapter 2 Page 3
2 CRM Training Phases
2.1 Awareness
2.1.1 Awareness is the essential first phase and usually comprises instructional
presentations focusing on the roles of interpersonal and group factors in the
maintenance of crew co-ordination. It is important because it provides a common
terminology and a conceptual framework for crew members to begin thinking about
crew co-ordination problems and how such factors have contributed to accidents and
incidents in the past. A useful way of beginning the awareness phase might be to
introduce CRM skills as they pertain to communication, situation awareness, problem
solving, etc.

EU-OPS/JAR-OPS CRM Training Syllabus

If you look at appendix 9 of CRMI Knowledge Requirements at line 5 it says:
“Information acquisition and processing, situation awareness and workload management”.

CAP 737, Crew Resource Management (CRM) Training

2.1 CRM encompasses a wide range of knowledge, skills and attitudes including
communications, situational awareness, problem solving, decision making, and
teamwork; together with all the attendant sub-disciplines which each of these areas
entails. The elements which comprise CRM are not new but have been recognised in
one form or another since aviation began, usually under more general headings such
as ‘Airmanship’, ‘Captaincy’, ‘Crew Co-operation’, etc. In the past, however, these
terms have not been defined, structured or articulated in a formal way, and CRM can
be seen as an attempt to remedy this deficiency. CRM can therefore be defined as a
management system which makes optimum use of all available resources -
equipment, procedures and people - to promote safety and enhance the efficiency of
flight operations.

Not only has MJ refused to accept he is wrong he has actually tried to ridicule the pilot that corrected him. This is the very sort of unprofessional cavalier attitude that CRM training is designed to eradicate!

On the PPL FI course the teaching of SA has been around for a long time, I have in front of me the AOPA Pooleys Flight Instructor Syllabus dated 2001

On page 26 Under BASIC PSYCHOLOGY the last section is entitled JUDGEMENT & DECISION MAKING, the last two lines are thus:
Risk assessment
-development of situational awareness

Additionally if you look at ‘On Tracks’ Instructor Refresher Seminar Workbook you will see in the Airborne Instructional Techniques Presentation, from page one through to page seven, some useful information on TEM and SA, guess why that is there? Because you are supposed to be teaching it!!!!! The irony is I understand that MJ has been on this very course.

With reference to some of the posts already made.

A good example to quote of just what SA is is the one of the racing driver Fangio

This is a good example if you want to be a F1 racing driver, if you want to teach your student relevant aviation SA use aviation models, there are masses of examples of bad and good SA available on the internet and the AAIB website or try Googling Flight 1549 or Flight 232. Ask yourself as an instructor what will have the most relevance for your student especially in regard to the task you want him to perform? If you must use F1,more relevant is Graham Hill’s fatal accident on the 29th November 1975.

SA, Situational Awareness or Spacial Awareness is something that some people have in abundance whilst others have very little, it has no correlation with intelligence.

SA has a direct correlation to spatial intelligence, before you mention intelligence ensure you actually understand the 9 types of intelligence.

Teaching it is exceedingly difficult; you can point out factors that the student needs to be aware of, but if they fail to conclude anything useful from the information received, then there is not much you can do
SA is very easy to teach, what you probably mean is you find it difficult to teach. Patience and perseverance are needed as with most conceptual subjects along with drip feeding on every lesson

You cannot conceive what you cannot perceive.

You cannot teach what you know little about.

- Sit at an airfield with a scanner and photocopied local chart, sketching paths of aircraft based upon their radio calls

- Whilst flying or driving monitor trees / clouds / smoke / crops... to try and maintain a continuous knowledge of wind direction.

- Watching other airceaft, keep trying to guess what they'll do next, and why?
Ridiculous - Youve done too much aircraft spotting!

There have been several mentions of involving defensive or advanced driving but this stab in the dark approach isn't the answer. Its like encouraging someone to take up golf to improve their cricket. Teach defensive flying, its called threat error management , its in the syllabus and that's what you are supposed to be teaching not improving someones journey to the airfield!

You are supposed be teaching SA from lesson one so next time you write airmanship on the board try and think 2013 rather than Birch & Bramson.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Amazing, two autodidactic new posters with apparently massive knowledge of the published regs and no practical experience in close succession - and quite similar writing styles. Both of-course now on my ignore list.

Mad Jock by comparison is an occasionally irritating blighter, makes a few mistakes about the details of regulations, and I suspect posts occasionally and inadvisably after a very enjoyable evening in the pub - but has clearly been there, done it, and is drawing upon decades of practical experience. (Similarly the original poster, who I know and respect massively as an instructor, not least because he showed the humility to ask the question in the first place.)

G

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

As an ex-fighter pilot turned sports coach, I had long discussions with our director of sport (ex-International sportswoman) as to how SA could be coached.
After 4 years, we concluded:

That SA is about 70% innate, and only about 30% is coachable.
That the vast majority of SA coaching isn't, i.e. opportunities to develop SA are provided, but very little teaching takes place.

The areas where we had success were:
put a lot of effort into getting everything which is teachable right.This leads for more mental time to appreciate tactical/strategic situations. As someone mentioned, get the trimming right and flying is easier.
Include in your training, at every session, an example of how good SA was used. In international sports, show a video. For flying, accident reports are good, but examples from people in similar situations who avoided accidents are better. CHIRPS?
Develop an equivalent to instrument flying's Selective Radial Scan. Pattern where and when people should be looking. Build in listening, etc.
Most importantly build in where the analysis and thinking are done.
Sort out the big mistakes first. Eventually, if you guard against all the big mistakes to make, there will be time to develop SA/safely resolve a situation.
When SA drills are practised/visualised, include errors and resolving them. If doing emergency drills, include things which don't matter and ensure the student correctly decides to ignore them. In other words, get the student used to dealing with distractors.
As a coach, you must analyse where SA is important, and why. Only then can you get the correct Pattern for scanning.

p.s. SA is very dependent on psychological state. The student needs to be relaxed, and confident in general terms but not overconfident. Having instructed at the basic level, the psychology was the first hurdle.

[BBK]

Charlecote

Regarding the facts you appear to be well briefed. However, your tone is quite insulting and you have gone out of your way to attack another person on this forum. If that is your idea of CRM then it is you that need to attend a CRM course.

BBK

Edited to add:

Genghis. I was wondering the same thing.;)

[Pull what]

On the PPL FI course the teaching of SA has been around for a long time, I have in front of me the AOPA Pooleys Flight Instructor Syllabus dated 2001

On page 26 Under BASIC PSYCHOLOGY the last section is entitled JUDGEMENT & DECISION MAKING, the last two lines are thus:
Risk assessment
-development of situational awareness

The AOPA Flight Instructor Syllabus allocates 5 hours instruction for Judgement & Decision Making which includes SA. The problem is there is still far too many lazy & ignorant 'tick in the box' instructors around who perpetuate sloppy standards and pass this onto their students, who in turn pass it onto theirs. Its actually difficult to break the chain and hardly surprising that few can teach it.

[Pull what]

makes a few mistakes about the details of regulations

MJ saying that SA is not part of an FI course and a CRMI course etc is hardly a few mistakes. Saying that you dont even need to watch a first solo or debrief them afterwards is hardly a few mistakes.

You say he has decades of experience, not that he has, one year as an instructor I believe but how does having decades of experience suddenly make you knowledgeable anyway. I am sure we all know pilots who have been flying for years who are not only very poor instructors but also very poor pilots, I certainly do and one or two of them are on here!

PS... Have you noticed that most of the worlds most serious air disasters have been caused by very experienced professional pilots.

[Pull what]

The trouble with vocalising everything is that they can't be listening whilst talking.

Having spent an hour in the circuit listening, in excruciating detail, to blogs not actually 'nailing it' and not really listening to me or other traffic.

Quite right-You cannot vocalise in the circuit and listen to the radio, to do so would be counter productive and you would in fact loose situational awareness.

Indeed part of SA is the adopting of sterile cockpit discipline in areas of high work load, the circuit being an obvious one

[Genghis the Engineer]

MJ saying that SA is not part of an FI course and a CRMI course etc is hardly a few mistakes. Saying that you dont even need to watch a first solo or debrief them afterwards is hardly a few mistakes.

You say he has decades of experience, not that he has, one year as an instructor I believe but how does having decades of experience suddenly make you knowledgeable anyway. I am sure we all know pilots who have been flying for years who are not only very poor instructors but also very poor pilots, I certainly do and one or two of them are on here!

PS... Have you noticed that most of the worlds most serious air disasters have been caused by very experienced professional pilots.

I'm sure MJ will pop up and make his own case at some point, and I've never actually met him in person - but continue to regard him by and large as one of the good guys. On the other hand, he's big and ugly enough to fight his own corner without my help.


This is illustrating something I think. A few people have quoted published documents saying that SA is supposed to be substantially taught. A few others have said that it's not being taught. Most people agree that there's no clear and agreed best practice in how to teach SA.

So...

- What happens in reality, and what's in the published docs (regarding teaching SA), do not apparently match.

- There doesn't seem to be a body of knowledge of best practice on how to fix that.

That would appear to be a bad thing. Whilst most pilots develop a working skill in SA, it does rather seem to happen despite, rather than because, of the formal syllabus. But we all agree I think that good SA is important.

So discussion of how to develop good SA in student and qualified pilots, is surely useful. Referring to the various syllabi, doesn't in itself progress that very much.

G

[mad_jock]

Right...

Situation awareness is quoted a lot of places.

And why not it is a good thing which we all strive to have. But I still haven't seen an perfect definition of it. We have the 4 pillars, we have the fancy bubble diagrams with a dark bit in the middle but all it really does is visualise a concept which to be honest varies depending what you are doing. You might be considered to have good Situation awareness in IMC in a radar controlled environment. But a pretty awful one when you hit the microlight in VMC in class G in procedural environment because you had your head down looking at the instruments which were spot on for what you were intending to do.

But taking first the FI course, there is ground school which again the term Situation awareness is used frequently. But how to teach it nope not there. Basic flying skills are meant to develop it but not out right teach it. Over a period of time it develops as experience is gained by the PPL and capacity is released from handling the aircraft. A big part of it is knowing what is coming next.

CRMI yes it is teaching you a form of situational awareness, that is how your classroom is interacting and you are being taught to facilitate the discussions to draw them towards certain facts and principles. In actual fact the CRMI course is open to all aircrew both cabin crew and pilots. I notice the comments about global have gone. But global is a group of talented cabin crew who are both instructors and examiners for the CRMI course. They just don't have any experience to teach aircrew situation awareness in the cockpit environment and that's not what the course is design to teach. During the course a TRI came in and did the statutory notechs lecture for the pilots. All the rest was done by cabin crew who have a highly developed situation awareness for if you can't dazzle them with brilliance you can baffle them with bull**** when it comes to facilitating a crm course and also the location of a decent glass of red wine (which personally as a Captain I think is distinctly lacking in some cabin crews training)

In airlines it is extremely common for cabin crew to run the yearly CRM courses. In fact I would say in the main they are better at it than the pilots with the same qualification. The only pilot only given courses are one day of the initial for pilots and the command crm course. So although the term situational awareness is used actually situational awareness isn't taught. Tools and methods of avoiding or recovering from a loose of Situation awareness is what its all about. See the threat, stop the threat.

In the main situational awareness is facilitated by SOP's and checklists in a multicrew environment, briefings are formalised, information is in a standard format and we train them to act in a certain, say certain things at particular times so that each bit of the flight is the same day in day out.

Doesn't stop pilots though smacking perfectly airworthy aircraft into the ground.

Now the core course. Is basically the principles of learning and the teaching/lecturing briefing style again its a course on how to instruct the practical items of flying a multicrew multiengine aircraft. SA isn't taught on a type rating flying the aircraft is you meant to have it as a CPL/IR holder already. If there isn't sufficient SA to safely operate the aircraft you fail. Short and sweet. They may allow further training to give you capacity flying the machine to allow you more capacity to be diverted to situational awareness but they don't teach it.

Not all pilots have the SA to be the Captain of a commercial aircraft, not all commercial pilots have the SA to be the Captain of a multicrew CAT aircraft. Not all Captains of CAT aircraft have the SA required to be line trainers.

If you could teach it there wouldn't be anyone failing flight tests and everyone would go into the LHS and everyone would be a line trainer.

[mad_jock]

Half wrote that before my early this morning.

The simple fact is that apart from a lot of quotes on what the regulations say Pull what shows absolutely zero touch with the practical application of said regulations in the real world. The context is taken away from the norm and also the application.

The initial bun fight over the dealing with a first solo had over a hundred years worth of instructor experience and 10'000s of thousand of hours telling him that he was talking rubbish and it was perfectly normal practise.

I have no doud't in my mind that he is a walter mitty sciolists type who seems to get gratification from arguing the toss online and wanting to be seen as the guru with no challengers.

Simple fact is that to anyone with any experience its blatantly obvious that his skills with google far exceed the skills which he is discussing.

And BKK as a newly upgraded captain you should know that you can't change personality. A crm course for pull what has as much chance of changing him as a crm course has of changing me from being a fat baldy Ugly(thanks G) training captain that swears to much.

And I would go with Fox and the main point is that it COACHABLE and not teachable.

As trainers and instructors we can give hints and prompts and a safe environment to develop in. But actually teach all the little processes that go through my head on a days flying. I more than likely don't know about 50% of them. Some are more than likely running at a sub conscience level giving those 5th sense warnings that something is brewing.

But if the pilot only has a half pint pot and requires a gallon jug to pass the test there won't be much you can do about it if the half pot is already full.

What did this student do for there hour building? Was it flogging around FL, A to A bimbles from a small field?

The whole point of the hour building is to develop the skills from PPL and allow the pilots SA to develop to that required for the commercial test through experence. Maybe the 100 hours hour building have been wasted without the pilot being stretched or developed past PPL level.

Oh and your latest account has joined your others on my ignore list pull what.

[mad_jock]

And G you actually are better placed to get the current research on the subject if you have access to a uni library and the journal reports.

There have been and running currently quite a large volume of research on the subject. NASA seem to have a lot going as you would expect.

The basic stuff for GA there is a bit of in the FAA archives but again plenty of what you should have but very little on the development of it in the pilot.

[Pull what]

You sound stressed Jock-perhaps you need a few days off?

[Genghis the Engineer]

A brief literature review uncovers relatively little - much about analysing what SA is, but most of that is at-least a decade old, and I could find just about nothing on aircrew training in the academic literature.

This didn't really surprise me. A disturbing fact is that most aspects of what we group nowadays as "CRM" are not backed up by much peer reviewed research and is essentially about expert (but largely unsubstantiated) opinions. One of these days, I'd like to help address that, but it's unlikely to happen this month.

G

[mad_jock]

Oh you should know by now that I can't see the rubbish that you have written

But to point out I was a year full time instructor before going to fly the line.

I have gone through a couple of renewals as people can see by your other walter mitty character quoting that I had been to a seminar so that's at least 6 years experience actively teaching at PPL level, my rating went out a few months ago. Not to mention 4 years as a line trainer which if you didn't know doesn't have a formal rating attached to it.

So G estimate of a decade is pretty good.

[Pull what]

Oh you should know by now that I can't see the rubbish that you have written

Yes strange that you say you have had me on ignore all along and yet you have been able to make an an enormous amount of references to what I have supposed to have said!

In fact you seem to be getting very confused about who is saying what. You also seem to think that the Global information isnt there anymore. I think youve lost situation awareness Jock.

[BBK]

It's a shame this thread has degenerated the way it has especially given the topic!

Anyway, out of curiousity I'd be interested in a brief guide as to how one teaches CRM/SA to ab initio. When I do teach I use the five point brief and I guess it would come under "airmanship"?

BBK

ps that's

Aim, Airmanship, Ex brief, Sortie brief and Check of understanding.

[mad_jock]

The thing with CRM as well is that it seems to go through phases and a bit like management theory depends on the theory of the year.

The core subjects on errors and human factors stays the same ish but the other soft stuff changes after nearly every high profile crash. It swings from touchie group hugs to more command and follow but don't let the captain kill you. And it also depends as well on the person training it and their personal take on it.

And some EASA inspectors seem to try and spread to put it blunty "French" style of CRM. One of them want us to replace all references to Captain to CM1 and FO to CM2 and line training Captain was to be changed to line operations facilitator or some such pish. When asked why all he could bleat about was that it was industry standard. Maybe for ATR and Airbus operators it is, but there is no need to inflict that pish on the rest of us.

Yes it is BKK if you use the edit ignore list function under your profile and add the pull what and the other mitty users, it turns into a decent thread again.

SA is a function of airmanship and vice versa. Improving one improves the other.

In some ways we could define both as applied common sense, has anyone got any idea how to train common sense into someone?

[Pull what]

MJ: Just to remind you, this is the information that you think isnt on here anymore in relation to a CRMI course on which you said very clearly

"IT IS ALSO NOT COVERED ON A CRMI COURSE."


What MJ said was:

Quote:

Its not covered in The flight instructors course.

Its also not covered in the CRMI course.

And its also not covered in the CORE course for TRI.

Not covered in the Line trainers course either.
Which is totally wrong, below for instance is Globals CRMI Course

Global Air Training
CRMI COURSE
Day Three
Delegate practical delivery (info processing, situational awareness, implications & management of conflict, decision making, workload, leadership)
Case study analysis linking to Human error & TEM

Any pilot, instructor or otherwise, who thinks SA is not part of CRM should not be anywhere near an aircraft.

[Pull what]

It's a shame this thread has degenerated the way it has especially given the topic!

Anyway, out of curiousity I'd be interested in a brief guide as to how one teaches CRM/SA to ab initio. When I do teach I use the five point brief and I guess it would come under "airmanship"?

BBK

ps that's

Aim, Airmanship, Ex brief, Sortie brief and Check of understanding.

You are quite correct on all counts!

[Pull what]

And some EASA inspectors seem to try and spread to put it blunty "French" style of CRM. One of them want us to replace all references to Captain to CM1 and FO to CM2 and line training Captain was to be changed to line operations facilitator or some such pish. When asked why all he could bleat about was that it was industry standard. Maybe for ATR and Airbus operators it is, but there is no need to inflict that pish on the rest of us.

The problem is the phrase captain has been long since been replaced replaced by the phrase commander for the operation of the flight. You can have two captains on a flight deck but only one can be the commander.

[Pull what]

But taking first the FI course, there is ground school which again the term Situation awareness is used frequently. But how to teach it nope not there. Basic flying skills are meant to develop it but not out right teach it. Over a period of time it develops as experience is gained by the PPL and capacity is released from handling the aircraft. A big part of it is knowing what is coming next
Even allowing for the awful use of English it's difficult to understand what he really means especially as he doesn't seem to know himself

there is ground school which again the term situation awareness is used frequently. But how to teach it nope not there.

That's strange because you said on the earlier post that situation awareness wasn't covered in the flight instructors course now you are saying the term SA is used frequently on the course. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why the term is being used frequently. Here is a clue, its a course to teach you to be an instructor and after the instructor says hello that's what he is trying to do by using certain terms frequently

There are 5 hours allocated for the teaching of Judgment & Decision Making which includes SA on the AOPA FI Syllabus and you say-But how to teach it nope not there. Here is another clue, if you can repeat most, or even some of what the FI instructor says to you during this five hours you could pass yourself off as an instructor who knows how to teach SA.


Simple fact is that to anyone with any experience its blatantly obvious that his skills with google far exceed the skills which he is discussing.
I can confirm that Google was not consulted once during the writing of this post.

[Charlecote]

So there you have it

This is how the flying instructor Genghis, who lives and breathes SA with his mate Juvenile Jock, recommends that you teach it

Sit at an airfield with a scanner and photocopied local chart, sketching paths of aircraft based upon their radio calls.

Afterwards colour in all those nice big pictures of aeroplanes in your painting book

Whilst flying or driving monitor trees / clouds / smoke / crops... to try and maintain a continuous knowledge of wind direction.
After being involved in a serious road accident in your pedal car explain to PC Plod that you were busy monitoring trees, clouds, smoke, crops and trying to maintain a continuous knowledge of wind direction

Watching other airceaft, keep trying to guess what they'll do next, and why?

Afterwards play hide and seek around the control tower

I've not tried this, but it seems to be an emulation of how I learned SA.

You haven't tried it, now there is a surprise! Perhaps you should, then you might realise why you have a great future in children's literature

[Pappa Delta]

Wow, this is fun. Can I try?

Student has PPL? Every once in a while he should take a nice girl flying who he intends to make love to afterwards.

Now he needs to think really hard to do everything right and impress, because he cannot screw up otherwise no love.

Start letting him think for himself. Yes, he will make mistakes, which is the best experience and way to learn.

Best Regards,
PD

[Pull what]

Start letting him think for himself. Yes, he will make mistakes, which is the best experience and way to learn.

I dont want to spoil your erection but the whole idea of HF training is to learn through the experience and mistakes of others. Remember the old adage, "If at first you do not succeed, sky diving is not for you!"

[Canadian Break]

If I may be permitted to add to the debate. Firstly - I am not a pilot but worked in an allied profession for over 30 years - one in which SA was the key factor for success. Before England went to the RWC in 2003 Clive Woodward visited the establishment I worked in - in an attempt to understand how we taught our students SA. The idea was that if there were transferrable skills then perhaps they could be brought to bear on the rugby field. The preparation for the visit was interesting because it meant that we had to ask ourselves the question "how do we teach SA?" From my perspective, and with about 10 years as an instructor in the bank, I am convinced that you cannot teach SA. It's essentially an aptitude based skill; what you can teach people is a routine, or a set of actions, that will help them to "get ahead" of the situation by clearing routine niff naff in a timely manner (as has been mentioned by many here already), thus giving them more time to ask themselves questions such as "what if". This seemed to work but only if the basic aptitude for the task was there. If it wasn't, then the stude was working at 100% simply to accomplish the routine task at hand. Just a few thoughts..........CB:ok:

[foxmoth]

PS... Have you noticed that most of the worlds most serious air disasters have been caused by very experienced professional pilots.

Not sure about the truth in this statement, I think this goes a bit more across the board. I would say though, that most of the great SAVES from disaster, of which we do not see as much of course because the crash did not happen, are by very experienced professional pilots!

[Pull what]

Not sure about the truth in this statement, I think this goes a bit more across the board. I would say though, that most of the great SAVES from disaster, of which we do not see as much of course because the crash did not happen, are by very experienced professional pilots!

Of course but the point being made is that very experienced professional pilots make make errors so its even more important to arm low hour amateur pilots with the knowledge and foresight to prevent errors and incidents taking place. Every airline teaches SA, TEM and Aviation Decision Making-how many GA flying schools do?

I am convinced that you cannot teach SA. It's essentially an aptitude based skill; what you can teach people is a routine,

Completely disagree, what you are teaching is a different way of OPERATING the aircraft. Teaching and learning is about change, bringing about change.

There are basically two ways of flying an aircraft

1.Let things happen and deal with them as they happen
2 Assess risk and possible error pre event-Eg at its simplest, PLAN AHEAD and make relevant Situationally Aware decisions(SA without relevant action is useless)

Its so easy to teach but only by instructors who understand and believe in it and who set the example and insist on it as a standard-all difficult to find outside of airline training

[cockney steve]

Is able to disseminate incoming info and take appropriate action

The above was repeated at least twice.

Shirley oneassimiates in formation, assesses it and then disseminates the salient details to the relevant team members.

Some of the self-righteous posters who derided the idea of vocalising a la IAM or the idea of assessing clouds. wind etc, making "colouring" drawings (a shameful, demeaning and belittling put-down, cast the mote from your own eye, sir! )......may like to reflect on what situational awareness actually entails.....CLUE....
The suggestions were to help the student train their MIND to process and absorb the information their senses were feeding it.
I don't think the suggestion was meant to imply that a trainee should give a continuous stream of patter whilst attempting to conduct a high-workload flight, but driving a car, it certainly can train the eyes, ears and brain to scan , assimilate and assess, spatial awareness and anticipation are greatly improved and the student rapidly learns to discard the irelevant (2 ladies coming out of a shop and turning to walk along the pavement (low relevancy) child exiting shop with head buried in bag containing purchase....heading to curb......Prepare to avoid or toot horn.
(highly relevant)

Instrument scan...".all green...a/s XX " announces the scan has taken place and NOTED. (following radio calls by third party) "Twin now at 10 o'clock for landing"

I could go on, but you get the idea?....No, I'm not a pilot either, but i'd fly with MJ or GtE any day....'Nuff said?

[mad_jock]

See the thing is I have done all the courses listed apart from he core course which I am booked to do in March. And had first time passes in the ones that carry a test most of them don't or in the case of the CRMI only has one if you want to be qualified to teach the crm ground courses. I might add the majority of the examinors for that are cabin crew without a working knowledge what situation awarness is in the cockpit never mind how to teach it (if you even can)

So although he and his mutlipe logins can quote documentation as much as they like. The fact is everytime they do they just show that they have zero exposure to the courses which they are talking about.

The subject is how do we teach SA.

I really don't know, and I am going with you can't, you can only develop whats there but once the bucket is full thats all they are going to have. I have got methods to develop it in low houred guys which the OP will be more than current with. I also have different methods with command course when we bring the big picture in over mutliple flights into the equation and longer time periods. FO's tend to be focused on the next 10-20mins of flight and the skippers need to have the whole day and sometimes up to a week ahead dealing with defered defects etc.

And cockney hundreds of people per week fly with me. If you include pilots I have released to line and trained its into thousands. Not alot in long haul terms but small regional not to shabby.

Personally I think even Douglas Bader could count the number of people the resident idiot flys with per year on his toes.

Its a shame really because he is turning into a thread killer. Maybe the reason why he decided to form a couple of more accounts is due to this fact. Nobody can be bothered to reply to him. And he doesn't get a kick if nobody argues with him. Most of the pro's on the site have him and his accounts on ignore or just can't be bothered dealing with his rubbish.

[Pull what]

The thread killer is that not one of the professionals that MJ rates so highly have been able to offer any valid method of teaching SA. Possibly because there isnt any Google info available on line for anyone to reference!

Most of the instructors of any substance have disappeared from Pprune because of the unmoderated attitude of people like MJ. MJ cannot stand to be challenged in any way and when he is he has to resort to name calling and other juvenile tactics such as putting people on ignore, how pathetic. Still I spent 6 months on a turbo prop fleet and I know how frustrating it must feel especially as he knows he will never be going any further.

[ACJcentral]

See the thing is I have done all the courses listed apart from he core course which I am booked to do in March. And had first time passes in the ones that carry a test most of them don't or in the case of the CRMI only has one if you want to be qualified to teach the crm ground courses. I might add the majority of the examinors for that are cabin crew without a working knowledge what situation awarness is in the cockpit never mind how to teach it (if you even can)

Strange that the mad jock was previously adamant that Situation Awareness wasn't a part of a CRMI course but now suddenly is accepting that it is. He seems to move the goalposts to suit his lack of knowledge. Surely as the forums self appointed expert and with his wide experience of training with cabin crew he should be able to tell us all how to teach SA, unless of course he is cabin crew himself. Highly unlikely of course with those spelling mistakes as even gash airlines have a minimum educational requirement for cabin crew

[deltahotel]

I think that SA is a really difficult thing to teach. Easy enough to define (use any one of a number of Notech Behavioural Marker systems). Also easy to state examples of good/bad SA behaviour, but to teach to improve? As D_D indicates, it’s not simple.

SA (like other non technical skills) does not fit in isolation. eg if workload management is good then more time is available to assess other factors – SA. If trimming (technical skill) is quick and efficient, capacity is increased, workload goes down, more time to assess other factors – SA. The tricky bit (as you hint) is that even with time available the SA message doesn’t necessarily sink in.

Not that familiar with the environment in which you teach, but never miss the chance to reinforce the SA message eg the statement ‘ten minutes to start, what still needs to be done?’ followed by why you asked the question (awareness of time). eg ‘you’ve just heard someone call downwind, Bloggs – where are they? Will they get in our way? Do we need to modify our pattern?’. eg on a navex ‘if we have an emergency now, where’s our best diversion a/f? What’s the weather like there?’.

etc etc etc to fit in with your environment so that, hopefully Bloggs will slowly appreciate that SA is more than just a box ticking exercise and is inextricably linked to both technical and other Notech skills. Very little in aviation sits on its own.

Good luck – keep the ideas coming because there’s plenty on this subject for us all to learn.