Stress and the Pilot.

Stress and the Pilot

The term Pilot Stress is a familiar one

 

 

 

This post is written for all Pilots who read my Safety Blog, so is to help us understand and identify lifestyle and flying related stress and the role that these can play in our Aviation lives.

Over the 80 % of all General Aviation Accidents are human error related. It is very important that stress and even the lack of stress can be a Key factor in human error.

Getting to know yourself, and how you respond to stress. The difference between one pilot and another in managing with stress while flying is in the amount of stress (experience) and how each individual reacts to pressure. There can be not set answer. It is not the purpose here on my blog to scare nor is it to say that all stress is bad. So, there is a stress level for each one of us as pilots where personal caution flags should go up, where you as a professional and a safety pilot or I think whether or not that stress could obstruct our normal healthy ability, to fly an airplane and to react in an abnormal emergency situation. The most important to all pilots is to learning to leave life style stress out of the cockpit is the key to long term persistence, learning to recognize the need to place stress reminders all pilots that the preflight decision making process can prevent incidents and accidents.

So, let’s describe short what that mean the word stress : on my readings some human factors books for general aviation , highlights that the term stress originates from engineering where it refers to the force placed upon an object to cause straining , bending , or breaking. In the human context, stress is commonly used to describe the body’s responses to demands placed upon it, whether these demands are pleasant or unpleasant. Anything that cause stress is called stressor.

It is very important that all pilots can recognizes stress for what it is and what it is not. So every pilot experiences stress, we are humans and nothing is perfect in our lives, the most essential it is to learn to any sign of perception of stress as a valued personal flying decision making tool. Being alert to the presence of stress permits any pilot to use procedures or precautions which reduce the effect that this stress may have our ability to Fly Safely.   

So, emotions are an enormously powerful set of forces in human nature. When you fly your airplane, emotions can have a remarkable influence on your ability to perform well, mostly when it comes to issues of judgment.

I would like to share this interesting introduction reading as I read on a safety pamphlet written for the AOPA Air Safety Foundation.

Pilots come in all sizes, shapes and ages. We come from different family backgrounds, different economic situations and have varying flight experience. Not two of us are exactly alike. Yet, we face that the same challenges in the air. We take off, fly and land. Regardless of whether we are flying a homebuilt, a Piper or Beech, a Lear or Gulfstream, or a B767, we must address the same challenges in flight.

Some of us are more psychological resilient and less susceptible to stress than others. But, each of us faces stress to a degree. Each of us will cope in differing ways. In that ability to cope lies an almost secret Key to individual pilot safety and accident prevention.

Understanding stress and its potential impact can be difficult. Recognizing stress is even more difficult because as we mature, we build defense mechanisms in the process of gaining experience.

These defense mechanisms alter our ability to admit to ourselves that the pressures of life or specific situations are indeed stressful. Psychologist tells us that our reactions to various forms of stress are also based on the physiological and physiological characteristic with which we are born. What can be stressful at one point in our lives may not be stressful later. The much married person is a lot calmer at his or her sixth marriage than at the first one. The soaring pilot can be a lot more resourceful and less stressed should his engine fail than the pilot who has always depended on that noise up front.  (Source AOPA)

My only purpose writing this article, is to share my thoughts and experiences, and perhaps you may gather something useful from them, what that mean stress to you, so this word and issue is very long to describe and is very interesting to read much more about this area to stay away from incidents and accidents, writing for me safety issues like this one give me and idea to express exactly what I wish to communicate, so I truly hope you will. Improve Safety in aviation is the KEY, remember as you make decisions in the airplane, you are influenced by your mental state and the extent to which you may be under mental stress. Always you as a good Safety professional airmen try to recognize stress and how to deal with it.

Safe Pilots, Safe Skies.