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Obsessive compulsive disorder among pilots
Anyone with a slight ocd? i have a small tendency to go through the checklists more than once
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Would a Normal Guy become a pilot?
Don't think so.. |
elvis you haven't even managed to go solo yet and yet you are already slagging off pilots.
mate you do not have a bright future ahead of you in aviation with that attitude. finding it a bit hard to learn the stuff are we???? |
@Tower dog : Fair point. Howard Hughes comes to mind every time. Trying to find a way to not get fixated on things. I guess it'll come with experience.
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@dubbleye: with what attitude? judgmental much? trying to relate to others who are going through the same thing that i am, is not a bad thing.
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elvis I'll give you a clue here.
the reason why you are repeatedly checking things is because you aren't sure of what you are doing. it happens to lots of pilots who aren't really up to speed with what needs to be done to get an aircraft configured for flight. the checklist doesn't get you into the air. it is the actions that you are being prompted to do in the sequence that you are being prompted for that do the work of getting an aircraft airworthy. look at your solo problem this way. at your current level of preparedness if anything at all occurred during the flight that was unexpected you would die in a state of panic trying to work out what to do. aviation is an incredibly unforgiving environment for those who aren't competent. |
I agree with what you just said about aviation being unforgiving to those who are not 'competent'. I think you should do some research about OCD, it's not a permanent condition and there are ways to deal with it. And i was only looking for someone else who i can relate to. But of course you must have an 'association fallacy' in your replies. Not uncommon among people your age. No more replies to your comments from here on. Good luck to you.
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Originally Posted by elvispilot
(Post 8393596)
I agree with what you just said about aviation being unforgiving to those who are not 'competent'. I think you should do some research about OCD, it's not a permanent condition and there are ways to deal with it. And i was only looking for someone else who i can relate to. But of course you must have an 'association fallacy' in your replies. Not uncommon among people your age. No more replies to your comments from here on. Good luck to you.
You need to stop whining on this forum, realize you know nothing yet and concentrate on learning the foundation skills and knowledge you need to be a safe beginner pilot. There is however one thing we do agree on quote "No more replies to your comments from here on. Good luck to you". unquote :rolleyes: |
Obsessive compulsive disorder among pilots
My God! The guy asked a question and you've all come down on him like a ton of bricks! - it's no wonder so many people are reluctant to post on this forum.
@dubbleyew eight, I don't see how asking if anyone else suffers with OCD is slagging others off... Maybe you're just on this forum to spit venom as that's how your posts read. @Big Pistons Forever, do you thing you might be in the wrong job if you think that a student asking questions is "whining?" Not something I'd've expected to hear from my instructor..! I have to deal with OCD everyday. I too follow the checklist to the letter. On my walk around, I check EVERYTHING - when I was training my instructor used to joke that I checked the aircraft more thoroughly than the engineers. Away from flying, as an example, when I wash up everything gets put in order on the draining board rack, cups are aligned perfectly and when making a cup of tea for a number of people, all the cups have to be inline and the handles all facing to the front... I can't help it, it's the way I am. I would rather fly with somebody who will actually check things properly, compared to some pilots I've seen that just look at the aircraft, see nothing has fallen off, then go flying! |
Does it need to be a syndrome (OCD)? Does it have to be a sign of someone who's unsure or unprepared (or unsafe)? Maybe it's a sign of someone who's diligent and thorough. I know one thing, I am not prepared to pass such judgement based on a question in an internet forum. That's something that should come from an experienced instructor who's observing the whole result.
Each of us has certain habits and behaviours that are our own and we're not all the same. That's what separates humans from robots and for me, makes us far more interesting. If you recognize that you have a habit that may be as bad as a safety issue, or simply off-putting to others, then recognizing it is the first step to solving it. The next step is to recognize what triggers them and to make an effort to improve. I'm not saying this is your issue, but FWIW, I was somewhat unsure and lacked self confidence in my early days of flying. I was helped by an excellent instructor who took the time to provide constructive critique that always included suggestions for improvement. Through repetition and experience I gained self confidence and learned to turn self doubt into self critique. Everyone has challenges during their early days of flight training. Good instructors use their experience and instructional techniques to help their students overcome those challenges. |
Feed the OCD, one day you'll make a great Check and Trainer...
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With all due respect Scott C when I read this it leaves me with a question.
Away from flying, as an example, when I wash up everything gets put in order on the draining board rack, cups are aligned perfectly and when making a cup of tea for a number of people, all the cups have to be inline and the handles all facing to the front... I can't help it, it's the way I am. |
Big Pistons Forever, good luck to your students.
Are you driving bulldozers in your other job? |
If you are so fixated on incidental issues how much does that take away from seeing the big picture ahead of the airplane? |
@scott: Hey bud, how far have you reached in your training?
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Hi, elvispilot!
I'm currently studying for my ATPL exams, then hopefully on to my CPL within the next 6 months or so. |
@Chuck, it takes nothing away from seeing the big picture. Before even starting the engine, I know I will have checked the aircraft thoroughly and my paperwork/plogs for the flight will be accurate, therefore ensuring a safe flight... I would hope anyway! I like to think that thinking ahead of the airplane had a lot to do with my flying over thirty thousand accident free hours. That and " NEVER " never being satisfied with good enough. :ok: |
I don't think there is anything wrong with always keeping your head in it, thinking if there is something missing or something you should be doing. If you aren't sure if you ran a checklist or a flow right, run it again. That's being diligent and I don't see how it is an indicator of being unprepared.
Distractions come up all the time and can interrupt the normal flow of getting an aircraft ready or ensuring safe operations... fueler, ramp, gate agent, purser, maintenance, weather, load, dispatch... I often run a quick second check in my head after I think I got it all or am all set up and ready to go. For whatever reason, !!!! gets missed sometimes, better catch it before you push the levers up and get the horn or worse... |
A good pilot, almost by definition , will have not have significant personality disorders.
Most airline psych tests are designed, among other things, to weed out those who may be obsessive, borderline paranoid, psychotic, delusional, eccentric, immoral, untruthful, too imaginative, psychopathic, too highly sexed, chinless or too much the clown or the laughing boy. Hopeless at mental arithmetic gets a low score too. They are all designed . . the tests . . .. to firstly make pots of dough for the outfits running them . Money misspent because nothing in this line of assessment has ever produced a better result than the time worn chat with the applicant by the old hands. The world is full of misfits. Dangerous people often enough. What a flier needs first and foremost is vigilance, awareness and a well honed respect for the world aloft he is so fortunate to visit and explore. It pays to be humble. Lest you be humbled...... or prematurely laid to rest. |
A pilot I know said he flew with a captain at an airline that had what is actually an OCD disorder. Smelling things. Apparently he would sniff every page of the flight plan. I guess the captain felt it might look odd as he mentioned it early on at some point. It was long haul so there could be several pages.
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elvis
OCD lies on a spectrum. Where one falls on that spectrum is the issue wrt whether it becomes manageable or debilitating. Safe aviating is built on SOP, routine, structure, diligence, thoroughness, preparedness to list but a few. OCD tendencies obviously could be beneficial during operations, however severe OCD I believe would be problematic. As you mentioned in an earlier post, managing the compulsions is the key in aviation as in daily living. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can be helpful/successful for a true diagnosis. Good luck. |
ORIGIN OF THE CHECKLIST
In October 30, 1935, at Wright Air Field in Dayton, Ohio, the U.S. Army Air Corps held a flight competition for aircraft manufacturers vying to build its next-generation long-range bomber. It wasn’t supposed to be much of a competition. In early evaluations, the Boeing Corporation’s gleaming aluminum-alloy Model 299 had trounced the designs of Martin and Douglas. Boeing’s plane could carry five times as many bombs as the Army had requested; it could fly faster than previous bombers, and almost twice as far. A Seattle newspaperman who had glimpsed the plane called it the “flying fortress.” The name stuck. The flight “competition,” according to the military historian Phillip Meilinger, was regarded as a mere formality. The Army planned to order at least sixty-five of the aircraft. A small crowd of Army brass and manufacturing executives watched as the Model 299 test plane taxied onto the runway. It was sleek and impressive, with a hundred-and-three-foot wingspan and four engines jutting out from the wings, rather than the usual two. The plane roared down the tarmac, lifted off smoothly and climbed sharply to three hundred feet. Then it stalled, turned on one wing and crashed in a fiery explosion. Two of the five crew members died, including the pilot, Major Ployer P. Hill (thus Hill AFB , Ogden, UT ). An investigation revealed that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash had been due to “pilot error,” the report said. Substantially more complex than previous aircraft, the new plane required the pilot to attend to the four engines, a retractable landing gear, new wing flaps, electric trim tabs that needed adjustment to maintain control at different airspeeds, and constant-speed propellers whose pitch had to be regulated with hydraulic controls, among other features. While doing all this, Hill had forgotten to release a new locking mechanism on the elevator and rudder controls. The Boeing model was deemed, as a newspaper put it, “too much aircraft for one man to fly.” The Army Air Corps declared Douglas’s smaller design the winner. Boeing nearly went bankrupt. Still, the Army purchased a few aircraft from Boeing as test planes, and some insiders remained convinced that the aircraft was flyable. So a group of test pilots got together and considered what to do. They could have required Model 299 pilots to undergo more training. But it was hard to imagine having more experience and expertise than Major Hill, who had been the U.S. Army Air Corps’ Chief of Flight Testing. Instead, they came up with an ingeniously simple approach: they created a pilot’s checklist, with step-by-step checks for takeoff, flight, landing, and taxiing. Its mere existence indicated how far aeronautics had advanced. In the early years of flight, getting an aircraft into the air might have been nerve-racking, but it was hardly complex. Using a checklist for takeoff would no more have occurred to a pilot than to a driver backing a car out of the garage... But this new plane was too complicated to be left to the memory of any pilot, however expert. With the checklist in hand, the pilots went on to fly the Model 299 a total of 18 million miles without one accident. The Army ultimately ordered almost thirteen thousand. They dubbed it the B-17. (From the Royal Victorian Aero Club's newsletter PLANE TALK Dec 2012) |
Parts of this thread are starting to look like that "other" web site. Had enough of the sound of hob nail boots, goose stepping beneath the Arch d Triumph there, let's not do it here.
WD |
Test Yourself!
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CDO is the worst form of OCD where everything must be in alphabetical order :)
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That's just the old smell test. If you try to do a taste test on the flight plan it leaves goober all over it and is off-putting for the rest of the crew.
I have flown with a couple of real obsessive guys in my career. One would have circled his seat three times before sitting down had there been sufficient room. Getting him ready to push-back on schedule was the quite an effort. He didn't last, sad to say: he eventually got too paralysed with ritual to keep his job. |
I'll cautiously weigh in.
Based on my observations of fellow students back in the day, and those that I have instructed over the years, I would say that the risks of obsessive behaviour (not a great word but I can't seem to find better just now) are very real. I know of several who were unsuccessful as pilots for the simple reason that they could NOT let things go. Yes, planning and checklists and routine are vital parts of preparing for and completing a flight safely. It is just as important to be able to prioritize. The aircraft will NOT stop while you recheck your plan 5 times, or do the checklist a few more times just to be sure. As experience is gained and the flying gets more challenging it will become necessary to, at times, live with ambiguity. I hear the cries already! I didn't say accept ambiguity, just deal with it. Inevitably the aircraft will find a way to malfunction that isn't written down, or no matter how many times you ask the agency your talking to they just can't get you the weather. As pilot you must be able to keep functioning whether you are getting the things you want or not. It is a fluid environment up there, and we must be able to adapt as well as plan. "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower |
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