The Effectiveness of Airline Pilot Training for Abnormal Events

Stephen M. Casner · Richard W. Geven · Kent T. Williams

133 citations0/0 files storedHuman Factors The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Human-Automation Interaction and Safety Risk and Safety Analysis Human Resource Development and Performance Evaluation

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of airline pilot training for abnormal in-flight events. BACKGROUND: Numerous accident reports describe situations in which pilots responded to abnormal events in ways that were different from what they had practiced many times before. One explanation for these missteps is that training and testing for these skills have become a highly predictable routine for pilots who arrive to the training environment well aware of what to expect. Under these circumstances, pilots get plentiful practice in responding to abnormal events but may get little practice in recognizing them and deciding which responses to offer. METHOD: We presented 18 airline pilots with three abnormal events that are required during periodic training and testing. Pilots were presented with each event under the familiar circumstances used during training and also under less predictable circumstances as they might occur during flight. RESULTS: When presented in the routine ways seen during training, pilots gave appropriate responses and showed little variability. However, when the abnormal events were presented unexpectedly, pilots' responses were less appropriate and showed great variability from pilot to pilot. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the training and testing practices used in airline training may result in rote-memorized skills that are specific to the training situation and that offer modest generalizability to other situations. We recommend a more complete treatment of abnormal events that allows pilots to practice recognizing the event and choosing and recalling the appropriate response. APPLICATION: The results will aid the improvement of existing airline training practices.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 133 citations exist upstream.

References

2004Educational Leadership 2014The Nature of Expertise 2000The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture 2001Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions 2001Educational Leadership 1984The role of a mental model in learning to operate a device 2000The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture 1984The Role of a Mental Model in Learning to Operate a Device*

Cited by

2018Get ready for automated driving using Virtual Reality 2017Dealing With Unexpected Events on the Flight Deck: A Conceptual Model of Startle and Surprise 2019What Do We Tell the Drivers? Toward Minimum Driver Training Standards for Partially Automated Cars 2020Transport safety and human factors in the era of automation: What can transport modes learn from each other?2018Training Pilots for Unexpected Events: A Simulator Study on the Advantage of Unpredictable and Variable Scenarios 2014Counteracting skill decay: four refresher interventions and their effect on skill and knowledge retention in a simulated process control task

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.