Definition of Airmanship

[fireflybob]

My Chambers Dictionary defines Airmanship as the "art of handling aircraft".

How do you define Airmanship?

[GT]

In broad terms, not being a hazard to yourself or others.

Regards, GT.

[Say again s l o w l y]

It's the difference between being an airplane driver and a pilot.

[StrateandLevel]

Awareness of the airborne environment. Not nescessarily anything to do with piloting or handling as it can equally appy to other crew members who are not pilots.

I recall a student who desplayed remakable airmanship but could not land an aeroplane. He was a flight engineer!

[B2N2]

Good airmanship is that elusive thing you strive for but never seem to reach....

(Sorry,had 2 beers already..):D :D :D

[Crossunder]

Well, I suggest y'all try Tony Kern's "Redefining Airmanship".

Good airmanship requires

1. Personal discipline
2. Skill
3. Proficiency

Once this is in place, one needs to have good knowledge of

1. Self
2. Team
3. Risk
4. Environment
5. Aircraft
6. Mission

This will lead to better Situational Awareness, thus enabling you to exercise good judgement which, in turn, promotes good airmanship.

Buy the book! (No, I'm not receiving money from Amazon ;) )

[StrateandLevel]

Delete Item 5 and you have the qualities of a Manager! A sort of universal list really.

The Qualities of an Officer and the Qualities of a Captain as depicted during OT were exactly the same. As one bright spark observed, how do we come to have Sergeant Pilots then?

Maybe all managers display good airmanship!

[fibod]

Good question Bob.

For me “airmanship” means the cerebral skills (+knowledge & attitudes) and behaviours of an aircrew member, “handling” being the manual counterpart. Of course, there is good and poor airmanship.

In teaching commercial pilots, it is airmanship which presents the greatest challenge, carries the greatest importance, and is least well and structurally taught. Every FI in the country can teach S&L 1, because our system of training FIs equips them with a framework to deal with the basic exercises and our system of examination repeatedly ensures they can reproduce it. However, generally an FI is on his or her own when it comes to developing a ‘system’ for teaching airmanship. As a result, many are not skilled and the majority resort to ad-hoc airmanship instruction.

In my opinion.

;)

[tacpot]

Fibod's post suggests a better question though - How do you instructors teach Airmanship?

If people are using ad-hoc methods to teach Airmanship, how about sharing them us?

[fireflybob]

Thanks for all your replies.

Interesting to note that nobody has mentioned the word "safety" yet!

My feeling is that instructors teach (good) airmanship by the example they set.

[tomahawk1673]

Common Sense.

[Crossunder]

Not really, 'cause common sense isn't all that common...

[Oktas8]

I'm not the most experienced pilot here, nor do I claim to have more than mediocre airmanship.

However, one aspect of airmanship I try to teach to CPL candidates is to achieve (in decreasing order of priority)

Safety
Comfort
Economy and
Expediency

in the correct balance for commercial operations. If they can achieve a good balance of the above they'll go far in the world.

NB: Comfort is pax comfort - so they'll want to fly with you again. Economy is so there will be money enough to get airborne on Monday morning, and Expediency is doing whatever makes the pilot's life easier.

regards to all,
O8

[fibod]

Bob, in many cases, I agree. However, teaching is not the same as demonstrating. If it was, we'd be back to the days of saying "sit tight Bloggs, watch what I do, and one day maybe you'll be as good as I am".

Of course an instructor should set a good example by demonstrating good flying and good airmanship.

But how do you teach airmanship?

Now if anyone can reply on here, I'll be amazed, and probably not impressed. My flying instructors’ handbook runs to 100's of pages. It scarcely mentions "the cerebral skills". In my mind it should be twice as thick, to teach thick people like me how to teach airmanship.

So, answers on here will be superficial, at best.

[Turbine]

fibod. You said it! You teach Airmanship by demonstrating a professionalism in every aspect of your own flying.

'They' will do as they see.

[tomahawk1673]

purrrrrrrfect ::D

[fibod]

Sorry Turbine, that's not teaching, that's demonstrating.

I presume when you set about teaching circuits you do something more than just flying excellent circuits yourself. Why should airmanship be any different?

[grade_3]

I think that previous posters on this subject have a point fibod, although it may not have been articulated in the manner you request.

The "teaching" of airmanship will begin in the first few flight lessons when the instructor will "demonstrate" important aspects of the skill. e.g. prioritization of tasks, decisions made in flight or on the ground about operational aspects (e.g. weather, traffic, fuel, timing etc.). A thorough grounding in theoretical aspects of aviation, which is important for a good knowledge base for descision making, can also be reinforced by the instructor in the early stages of training.

This "demonstration" of airmanship should continue throughout the trainee's program of flight and theory training.

At various stages throughout the flying training process the instructor may seek to involve the student in the descision making and operational processes. This could be likenend to "directing" the student through the process, where the student takes the action but the instructor can guide or influence the thought process. For example, an exercise on precautionary search and landings can be used to re-inforce contingency planning, situational awareness and other "airmanship" skills by presenting the student with several slightly different scenarios on which to base the lesson.

The "direction" through airmanship scenarios will also continue throughout the training, and will hold particular importance during the mid-stages of PPL navigation training and early in the CPL training phase where the instructor can present actual or simulated scenarios for the student and assess or guide his/her responses.

Finally, "monitoring" of airmanship descisions is an important yet almost superfluous element of an instructors assessment of a students progress. Essentialy the student needs to utilize all available resources and come to a descision or perform an action themselves with minimal instructor influence.

In Australia certain airmanship aspects are written into our Day VFR syllabus for the PPL/CPL trainee. This makes it easy to evaluate these aspects as the student progresses and other items may be introduced at the instructors discretion. Essentially, all descisions and actions that the student makes in his/her flying training can be regarded as an indication of their developing airmanship. The level of airmanship of the stduent needs to be assessed by an appropriate instructor as being adequate before the student will be authorised for certain flights (e.g. first solo nav etc.).



To summarise, I propose that airmanship, whilst essentially being "common sense" as tomahawk1673 suggested, involves many important elements of CRM and the descision making processes. Such skills may be taught formally but in GA flight training are most often taught as a component of the actual flying training phase as I outlined above.

Good airmanship is often the result of previous experience, as well as physical skills and spare mental ability (that ability not required to pilot the aircraft). This can be fostered by presenting a student with realistic scenarios throughout their flying training and ensuring they are given the latitude to follow their descisions through to the outcome in a safe, controlled environment.