vilas, no argument with
your view of the ‘follow procedures’ theme. However this, and other discussions on SOPs, overlook the ability to know when to deviate from the norm, and what action to take in unusual, beyond the norm situations.
The primary skills are of situation awareness and its ‘sense making’ component - understanding.
These are aspects of airmanship, difficult to describe, even more difficult to teach due to the tacit nature of the knowledge required; the situations have to be ‘experienced’ and judged in context.
This can be related to expertise, and how expertise is achieved.
Expertise *:- ‘
you are demonstrably extremely good at what you do, having spent a long time learning your craft; that you can pass your knowledge on to other people; and that you are recognised by other people as being extremely good at what you do.
A weakness of modern aviation is ‘
a long time learning’ and infrequent opportunity for learning; thus in some, non SOP situations, pilots lack the necessary expertise - even if they are expert in normal operations.
Noting that ‘
the most valuable aspect of expertise – the wisdom based on experience about what to do and what not to do, … it isn’t just about knowing stuff and being able to do stuff, but about having the judgement to apply that knowledge in the right way’. i.e. when there is no procedure.
* The link is short review - ‘how to be an expert’; the levels of expertise can be correlated with pilot training and behaviour - apprentice, journeyman, master. Note the views on error, and how to improvise; ‘
in being able to respond to the unexpected, and to bring into play all the knowledge and experience you’ve gained to make a sensible response to an unpredicted situation. That’s the sort of wisdom in expertise we’re looking for now’.
https://www.newscientist.com/article...er-your-trade/