Originally Posted by
safetypee
The frustration is with my inability to understand why many responses in this thread, and similar cross the forum, resort to procedure or documents for factual solutions without considering that the situation may not be as that assumed in a simple if-then checklist.
Perhaps an issue of the industry's current view of safety management ?
In addition, the difficulty in explaining a way forward with required knowledge and skill, other than by example; particularly for Tacit Knowledge, awareness and judgement.
SOPs are the 'Streetlights'; we operate in the 'Shadows'
Ha but this I understand, however...
The act of drowning is easy and self imposed once you jump in any kind of 'hostile' water. The act of swimming is taught step by step in a safe environment. The reaction to stop drowning is a revertion to what is taught before (try to float - passive or swim - active).
Humans don't survive in structure-less environments unless there is time available to adapt. Give the brain knowledge, awareness and judgement, and you still might end up drowning if no reference is made to previous taught behaviour to which one has as quickly as possible "hang-on" to. And as much as your examples refer to "out of the SOP" steps, the SOPs did give guidelines as to how not to drown.
In even in the shadows, the lights are points of reference giving trust and showing the way because of one very important SOP guideline: it shouldn't do more harm than not. To get back on topic... if turbulence becomes "uncontrollable" it becomes upset recovery. And hence we try no to drown with taught techniques.
On the topic of the "why this SOP", I completely agree, and the SOP is not king nor ultimate goal. However, in this world of aviation with the job of "pilot" being very common and pilots coming from all kinds of backgrounds, it is pretty impossible to state that the "darkness" is survivable for the majority of pilots when you decide to question the streetlight.