Megan Stevenson
Wilbur Wright said, ‘It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.’
Pilot knowledge and skill are human factor concepts that have been researched and refined over the decades. When it comes to a proficient pilot, there is little dispute that a calm demeanour, thorough knowledge and ‘good hands’ are a winning formula. But, what do the building blocks of these skills look like? And, how does one develop and maintain a winning formula?
Skill Acquisition
Skills, or skill-based knowledge is the ability to ‘do something’ (trimming, balancing a turn, landing) and is the reflection of cognitive processes manifested into motor actions. In essence, this is the difference between knowing what to do (the steps to be followed) and performing the skill.
A true skill is that which is exceptionally hard to verbalise as to how it was achieved – you just feel how much back pressure you needed to catch the flare, right?
True skill is different to declarative knowledge in that you are often not consciously aware of the skill being performed – it is often automatic, almost on autopilot.
So, how do we get from knowing to doing?
The answer lies in Neural Mapping – the process in which your brain creates connections between neurons, to help you learn and remember things. When you learn something new, or practice a skill, your brain repeats and strengthens these connections, forming ‘maps’ that guide how you think, move, or respond. The more you use these pathways, the stronger and faster they become, making actions or thoughts feel automatic over time.
This mapping is like walking a trail in the bush – the more you walk it, the more permanent it becomes, therefore making it clearer and easier to follow.
What’s interesting though, is as much as that path is permanent, it is fallible. And that’s the aspect we are looking at. Learning and skills acquisition place high demand on the brain. This can detract from situational awareness, decision making and other executive functions.
Fortunately, skill-based activities can be made more efficient with time, repetition and practise.
This process, specifically when focussing on skills acquisition, occurs over three distinct cognitive phases, with each of these phases employing different demands on the brain’s available ‘RAM ‘ (available memory for task completion).
- The Cognitive Stage – Thinking it Through
In this stage you are focussed on factual knowledge of the required skill, typically by memorising and then executing the steps needed to perform it.
This stage demands the full attention of the brain and engages a wide area of brain activity. While each step is executed, the pre-frontal cortex, or ‘thinking brain’, is occupied which can limit situational awareness – you might get stuck on a specific step or, if interrupted, you could be delayed or even stop in the execution of the task.
- Associative Stage – Connecting the Dots
In this phase, your brain learns to connect a stimulus with a desired response and requires practice to integrate muscle coordination with visual and tactile feedback.
The more you practice, the more you begin to link each step in the process with expected outcomes. This reduces the pre-frontal activity as you use less ‘thinking’ and transition to more ‘doing’.
You will transition from merely following steps to actively evaluating your progress and making adjustments as needed. Although deliberate focus is still required, you become better equipped to manage distractions while performing the skill.
- Automatic Response Stage – Running on Autopilot
With extensive practice, your skills become automatic. At this stage, executing the procedure requires minimal attention (minimising pre-frontal demand), allowing you to multitask effectively.
Performance becomes faster, smoother, and more efficient, often without conscious awareness of the individual steps involved. You might find that you no longer recall or explain the steps as the skill has become second nature. At this point the skill is mapped into your ‘muscle’ memory. This creates ‘available RAM’ for executive and other cognitive functions.
Keeping it Fresh
The adage ‘use it or lose it ‘ can be applied to most acquired skills, whether physical, mechanical or cognitive. Unless that skill is exercised regularly, the process will become less familiar and more difficult as time passes and, eventually, the ability may be lost completely.
This phenomenon is known as skills fade – the ‘decay of ability or adeptness over a period of non-use. ‘ This fade of skills could be compared to overgrowth on a trail in the bush – the less you walk it, the more it degrades and the more difficult it becomes to walk on.
There are a number of factors that influence the degree of ‘fade’. Perhaps the most obvious is the familiarity and retention interval – newly acquired skills deteriorate quickly as the neural pathway is still ‘fresh,’ while skills that have been acquired over a long-term period take longer to fade. In addition to these influences, the type of task and its complexity further plays a role.
Conditions of learning (positive or negative), and instruction technique, in addition to retrieval conditions also play a role.
Lastly, we must consider the individual ability of the pilot, in addition to their previous experience and existing knowledge.
What we have learned
EASA stress that reduced activity not only degrades skills but prevents development of further proficiency through practice and insight. It adds that a secondary concern of proficiency decay relates to spare mental capacity – correctly carrying out a task demands more effort.
It can be deduced that a decay in proficiency creates a safety risk – speed, accuracy and task efficiency will deteriorate with a lack of practise which will, in turn, reduce safety margins for a given flight. Studies have found that pilot skill can degrade by up to 70% in just 90 days.
Post-COVID studies found that, while pilots displayed the same speed in skills execution, they were three times more likely to make mistakes due to a loss of accuracy.
We have all felt ‘out of practice’ at some point, but how do we know how much ‘fade’ we have experienced?
After a period of non-use of skills we see that pilots find that they still react quickly to tasks in the flight deck. However, post-COVID studies revealed that, while you are likely to maintain the same speed within the flight deck, with checks and flows, you are likely to lose up to three times your accuracy. So it feels like you’re proficient because you’re ‘back in the groove’ – you can do what you are required to do, you can do it at a sufficient pace, but you are not necessarily doing it accurately!
ICAO (in their SMS Initial course) state that “Aviation accidents are usually the result of many actions and/or inactions accumulating to a point where the crew could not be relied upon to perform their jobs accurately.” And, that’s what we really want to protect ourselves from.
Skills fade impacts pilot reliability and increases the likelihood of error due to the fact that it essentially reverses the skills acquisition process. The brain reverts to the associative phase and, in the worst case, cognitive stages of neural mapping – both of which will increase the ‘RAM’ demand.
You can think of your brain much like the operating system on your phone – memory is dedicated to specific tasks (or apps). Your brain is doing exactly the same thing – you’ve got your operating system (your metabolism, heartbeat, digestion etc) – if you’re ill, it’s going to need more RAM.
The more flying tasks you’re doing, the more hands on you are, the more RAM you’re going to need; the more mental processing you’re doing, the more RAM you’re going to need.
Add in emotion (good or bad), and we are increasing RAM demand even further! Essentially, you are opening more and more browser tabs and slowing the system down. Now, what you are left with, is the scraps of the remaining RAM for executive functions – problem solving, stress management and task load management. All the items that you are going to need most in an emergency.
‘I’m Safe’ ….or, are you?
How do you assess your bandwidth or available RAM? Shy of a ‘body battery’ or ‘health status’ report on a smart watch, the assessment is left largely to you. A common tool, often seen in flight schools, flying clubs and ops bulletin walls is the ‘I’M SAFE’ poster. You know the one that asks about Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, and have you Eaten?
For the most part, we will glance over it with a ‘Yeah, yeah. Okay, I’m good’ type of personal pre-flight without attributing much time to the RAM demands each element. So, while it is easy to ask ‘Am I safe to fly?’ it’s probably more prudent to ask – ‘If the unthinkable had to happen today, would I have the bandwidth to handle it?’
So the question to consider is – While you might be fast enough, will you be accurate enough?