Category Archives: Aviation

H2F BITESIZE #40

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Machine learning methods for cognitive load analysis and classification in aviation.

H2F BITESIZE #39

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Non-technical skills in the civil aviation sector.

H2F BITESIZE #38

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: The first fatal Helicopter Emergency Medical Services crash in Turkey: Weather, human factors, and lessons learned.

H2F BITESIZE #37

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Wellbeing of Helicopter Emergency Medical Services Personnel in a Challenging Work Context: A Qualitative Study

H2F BITESIZE #36

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Effectiveness of a new basic course incorporating a medical trainer simulator for HEMS education in Japan: A pre–post intervention study.

H2F BITESIZE #35

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Using SHERPA to predict human error on the maritime SAR helicopter hoist task. 

H2F BITESIZE #34

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Enhancing aviation safety with artificial intelligence: A systematic literature review on recent advances, challenges and future perspectives.  

H2F BITESIZE #33

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: The potential of flight simulation to support pilot training for mountain helicopter emergency medical services.

H2F BITESIZE #32

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Quantifying the impact of spatial disorientation on pilot mental workload and attentional focus.

Beyond systems knowledge: trust, automation, and the modern pilot.

Little time is spent discussing the critical role played by the concept of trust in our interactions with automation. While automation-related incidents are often framed as failures of systems knowledge, this article argues that they are more accurately understood as failures of trust calibration. We explore what is meant by trust in this context, and how it determines our reliance, use, misuse, or indeed, disuse of automated systems. 

H2F BITESIZE #31

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Helicopter pilots encountering fog: an analysis of 109 accidents from 1992 to 2016.  

H2F BITESIZE #30

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Incidence and challenges of helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) rescue missions with helicopter hoist operations: analysis of 11,228 daytime and nighttime missions in Switzerland.

H2F BITESIZE #29

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Effects of acute stress on aircrew performance: Literature review and analysis of operational aspects´

H2F BITESIZE #28

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Workload in helicopter rescue operations – A comparison of two different rescue methods in a randomised cross-over design.

H2F BITESIZE #27

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Crew Resource Management: What aviation can learn from the application of CRM in other domains

H2F BITESIZE #26

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Pilot see, pilot do: Examining the predictors of pilots’ risk management behaviour

H2F BITESIZE #25

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Emotions-based training: Enhancing aviation performance through self-awareness and mental preparation, coping with stress and emotions.

H2F BITESIZE #24

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Hero or Hazard: A systematic review of individual differences linked with reduced accident involvement and influencing success during emergencies.

H2F BITESIZE #23

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Exploring the role of pilot attributes and skills in response to in-flight emergencies.

H2F BITESIZE #22

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: The Virtual Landing Pad: Facilitating rotary-wing landing operations in Degraded Visual Environments (DVE).

H2F BITESIZE #21

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Safety in high-risk helicopter operations: The role of additional crew in accident prevention.

H2F BITESIZE #20

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Resilience and brittleness in the offshore helicopter transportation system

H2F BITESIZE #19

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: The potential of technologies to mitigate helicopter accident factors

H2F BITESIZE #18

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Impact of adverse weather on commercial helicopter pilot decision-making and standard operating procedures.

H2F BITESIZE #17

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: The role of native English speakers in safe, efficient radiotelephony

H2F BITESIZE #16

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Distributed Cognition in Search and Rescue: Loosely coupled tasks and tightly coupled roles.

H2F BITESIZE #15

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Pilot Monitoring: Summary of Research and Applied Training Tools

Landing blind: from battlefield brownout to the civil cockpit

Technology may one day give us perfect vision through dust and snow. Until then, or as long as helicopters land on unprepared surfaces, brownout will remain a hazard in rotary-wing operations. Civil pilots cannot avoid it entirely, but they can manage it intelligently: Why discipline, teamwork, and training still trump technology in brownout

H2F BITESIZE #14

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: The role of shared mental models in team coordination CRM skills of mutual performance monitoring and backup behaviors.

H2F BITESIZE #13

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Effects of Hydration on Cognitive Function of Pilots.

H2F BITESIZE #12

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Differences in physical workload between military helicopter pilots and cabin (technical) crew.

H2F BITESIZE #11

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Investigating Offshore Helicopter Pilots’ Cognitive Load and Physiological Responses during Simulated In-Flight Emergencies

H2F BITESIZE #10

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Factors affecting safety during night visual approach segments for offshore helicopters.

H2F BITESIZE #9

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Is It All about the Mission? Comparing Non-technical Skills across Offshore Transport and Search and Rescue Helicopter Pilots.

H2F BITESIZE #8

I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words. This week: Helicopter pilot performance and workload in a following task in a degraded visual environment

Getting the right amount of stimulation from your simulation: What role does fidelity have in training to fly? 

Full flight simulators are amazing tools for learning. Training devices have become more sophisticated, more true to the environment they recreate and, with this innovation, more expensive to use as well. But have these advances made them more effective as training tools in parallel, or is there a limit to the benefits of ever-increasing realism to the learning environment? This article aims to explain two of the key concepts in using simulated environments for training, fidelity and transfer of training, and invites you to consider the pros and cons of your own experiences of teaching and learning in the simulator.

Military vs Civil: Does training background affect safety in helicopter pilots?

Which system produces the better pilot – military or civil? Does it matter? According to a recent study of helicopter pilots from the University of Aberdeen with the title “Does training background affect safety in helicopter pilots?” (Kaminska et al., 2023), maybe we are right to be asking these questions. The answers suggest that we need to pay more attention to how the military-civil divide impacts CRM behaviours amongst mixed crews. What do the cultural differences embedded in the different ways these pilots have been trained mean to competency, operational effectiveness, and – ultimately – safety?

On helicopters, elephants, and training.

This is the elephant in the room that has been stubbornly refusing to move: very little has changed in how we train helicopter pilots for four decades or more. In the meantime much else has changed, but collectively we are unwilling – or unable – to make significant changes to what the training and checking system prescribes. Why is this? And what should we do about it?

Navigating cross-cultural turbulence: Why the multi-national complexion of aviation demands we should all add culture to our competencies.

Just mentioning the word culture seems often to be met with a glazing over of eyes. I learned that discussing ‘cultural capability’ in the military was unfashionable, uncool, and frankly unmilitary. I have a sense that the same is true in the world of aviation, which is ironic given the uniquely international nature of the industry…

Hindsight: blessing or curse?

Have you ever read an accident report, had an incident related to you, or sat through a CRM case study that made you say out loud something like:

“What were they thinking?” “Why on earth did they decide to do that?” “How could they not have known?” “They must have seen that coming, surely?”

If you have – and we all have – then you have fallen victim to probably the most powerful and omnipresent psychological bias out there: the hindsight bias.

A very normal accident

It was early evening on the 24th September 2022 when an offshore AW139 helicopter inbound to Houma-Terrebonne Airport in Louisiana, USA, declared a mayday. A lot had already happened in the cockpit by the time the co-pilot hit the press to transmit… 

We take a look at Normal Accident theory in the light of a recent accident: Technology is both a risk control and a hazard itself. The act of adding technology is at best risk neutral. Continually adding more technology in the belief that we are adding more layers of defence in a system is flawed because we are in fact adding more combinations of possible failure modes. In other words, there is a direct trade- off between increasing safety by adding in more controls, and decreasing safety by adding complexity.

Helicopter human factors in focus

“For no other vehicle is the need for human factors research more critical, or more difficult.” Sandra G. Hart.

That’s a bold assertion that I had never heard anyone make before and consequently had never given much consideration to whether or not it might be the case. So let’s unpack that proposition a little by looking at the arguments that the author offers to back it up…

The safety dividend of aviation’s professional culture?

How much does an aviator’s own cultural identification with safety have a role in contributing to safety outcomes? Certain professions have strong and distinctive professional cultures. Aviation is one of these. Does a belief in a deep-rooted safety culture underpin how aviators identify as professionals?