Creativity in the cockpit.

Are procedure and standardisation the antithesis of creative thinking?

Does developing creativity combat procedurally driven mental rigidity ?

Can creative thinking help to mitigate the effects of operational unpredictability?

Aviation worships a lot on the altar of standardisation and procedure. And with good reason. Safety often depends upon rule-based actions, routines, and drilled responses. As a result, by character and by training, aircrew are often quite dogmatic and rigid in their approach to their work. But, research has shown that reliance on procedures can have a negative impact on creative thinking (Klein et al., 2007, Martin, 2010, Landman, 2017). In contrast, creativity is a term more associated with artists, novelists, and musicians. It demands free-thinking, open-mindedness, and even conceptual looseness for which there seems to be little place in the cockpit. 

But, there is a link between unpredictability and the need for creativity, and it’s all about being able to adapt to unexpected events and dynamically changing circumstances. Despite the routines, drilled responses, and standardisation favoured in aviation, we are starting to improve our understanding that a degree of creativity in aircrew is critical, especially when it comes to being able to respond effectively to unpredictability in the air.

A degree of creativity in aircrew is critical

Unpredictability in helicopter operations

Although the need for people to adapt to changing circumstances is common to most sectors of aviation, it is especially so in helicopter operations, which are often characterised by a high degree of unpredictability.

(The following insights are derived from original data from a 2023 survey of over 500 military and civil helicopter crew around the world).

Coventry university 2023

Helicopter teams are expected to perform under conditions of uncertainty every day. In fact, 99% of helicopter crew agree that managing changing circumstances is characteristic of their role, with over half of them strongly agreeing with this statement.

• 70% said that they found circumstances could change significantly on at least a regular basis during a mission, with 48% saying this happened frequently or very frequently in their operation. The most highly reported reason for this was a significant change to environmental or meteorological conditions, such as a task extending from day to night or the need to switch from visual to instrument flying due to deteriorating conditions. 
• Over a third of crews reported changes at least regularly, or more frequently, to their:
  1. Task objective (for example, having to prioritise one of several simultaneous rescues, or being re-tasked or stood-down from a task in flight);
  2. Point of landing (for example a change in destination hospital depending upon the nature of a casualty’s injuries);
  3. Tasking information (such as the number of casualties or the advance of a fire front);
  4. Payload (for example, the requirement to board additional passengers). 
• Many other types of changing circumstances were cited by crews in their different operations. Some of these were universal (for example, the impact of changes to ground support services, aircraft serviceability/equipment failures, and flight time limitations). Others were specific to operational activity, such as a changing threat environment or changes in tactical communications codes (military) or a moving point of departure/arrival (maritime).  

Launching for a mission with incomplete information about the intended task is another source of unpredictability frequently encountered by helicopter crew.

• 83% of crews reported that they sometimes have incomplete information about the coming mission. 
• At the point of take-off, over a quarter of helicopter crews reported still lacking information about the objective of their task, at least regularly. 
• Over half said they regularly to very frequently lacked an accurate task location or duration.
• Nearly a third said they lacked information about an incident or a casualty frequently or very frequently. 

The importance of creative thinking.

When it comes to handling this level of unpredictability in day to day operations, experienced aircrew recognised the importance of creativity in solving problems. 77% agreed that creativity plays an important part in successfully achieving their tasking. 

77% of helicopter crews recognised that creativity plays an important part in successfully achieving their missions.

And they are required to make use of these skills more often than you would expect.

• 91.6% of helicopter crew said that sometimes they had to use their existing knowledge to fit a novel situation or problem.
• And 97.2% said that their operational experience and training had given them a tool-box of techniques that they could use to innovate solutions to these unfamiliar situations.
• Furthermore, 90% said that they sometimes had to adapt known procedures or techniques to allow a mission to be accomplished successfully.

Another 77% of the crew surveyed believed that having too rigid a procedural mindset would negatively affect successful performance on a flight. In other words, standardisation is important but so is the ability to handle the unstandardisable. That means being able to think beyond learned responses and procedural frameworks …

How do you build creativity into your non-technical skill set?