Situational Awareness and Human Factors in Aviation

Situational Awareness and Human Factors in Aviation

I would like to share this interesting issue and my motivation to write these words and, also I hope it is going to help all Pilots flying around the world, to study more how people interact with their environments. Human Factors and Situational Awareness are two important concepts in General Aviation, we need to define what is meant by those concepts , to stay away of incidents and accidents, and the interaction and communication with the other pilots and crews following  my Safety Blog and my encouragement to share  different safety perceptions with the Aviation Community.   

The organized concepts of Situational  Awareness and Human Factors in aviation are essential to flying safely all the time.

Three components of Situation Awareness are: Spatial Awareness, System Awareness, and Task Awareness. Each of these components has real-world implications for the attention to prevent incidents and accidents in General and Commercial Aviation.

What is Situational Awareness?

- To have a correct perception of the situation.

- Be able to rapidly recognize a change in the situation.

- Understanding the impact of any change in the situation.

- Be able to development the situation in the near future to avoid a fatal condition.

Situational Awareness is not a specific behavior. Is the product or result of the attitude, and the behaviors and actions.

Mental discipline is necessary while flying to keep you as a Pilot aware of all factors around you.

Always you need to track of your position, using all your navigation equipment as well your implements that you have in to your cockpit. You must always be vigilant your flight which requires constant discipline.

You must monitor everything and of course also you need to pay attention to your passengers and crew assuring their comfort and safety of the flight.

The moment you lose track of any of these, you have diminished your Situational Awareness.

Remember, this makes you more vulnerable to mistakes, particularly if a situation arises in which you feel pressure or stress, flying bad weather, in any abnormal or emergency situation etc.

What is Human Factor ?

Maybe you have a different concept what that mean Human Factor, the concept Human Factors is about people in their working and living environments , and of course is the relationship with the equipment procedures and the environment . Human Factors involves all the performance of human beings, related in our career as Pilots.

It is very important to understand the concept, to be very objective as Safety and Efficiency in all flights.

As I said Human Factors is the study of how people interact with their environment, is very important to know in the case of General Aviation, to study of how Pilot performance is influenced by such issues in the new generation with the new technology that could be effect of emotions, and the interaction and have a good communication with the other crews to prevent accidents.

Don’t forget the primary cause in the majority of accidents; Pilot Error is an action or decision of the Pilot that if not caught and corrected on time, could contribute to the occurrence of an incident or accident. I want to explain and be emphasizing that the term Pilot Error, does not indicate that all errors are the fault of the Pilot. Occasionally in my experience as an Aviation Accident Investigator, external circumstances are the causes of the fatal occurrence too.

Remember we as a Human being everybody make mistakes , nobody is perfect , we are humans, but the most important is to recognize on time that error, and understand due to human error are often the result of a series of events which lead to an accident if we don’t broke that  link of the chain .

Always Follow the procedures, keep Safety in Mind