Albert Rios

Missed Class
26 OCT 11

Situational Awareness
Situational awareness is defined as the perception of the elements in an environment
within a volume of time and space, the understanding of their meaning, and the estimation of
their status in the near future. There are five main elements to proper situational awareness
entailing experience and training, quality of flying skills, spatial orientation, health and attitude,
and cockpit manageability. Poor situational awareness can lead to many undesired outcomes.
Situational awareness involves more than just physical position awareness, but position al
awareness does play its role. If a pilots or crews situational awareness is great, then the
probability of an accident occurring is significantly lower than if it were the opposite. Although
this is true, situational awareness is not something that is gained and kept. Once, proper
situational awareness is earned, it becomes very fragile. Any tethering in procedure or attention
to detail can cause the awareness to be dismissed and go away because of how delicate it is to
maintain. Situational awareness is directly affected by the workload placed on those involved.
The greater the workload, the more stress that is brought on, and the more the attention must be
divided in an unnatural state. In order to maintain good situational awareness the crew should
divide up the workload evenly so that no one crew member is coping with more stress than any
other.
In having a good sense of situational awareness one must consider the five elements of
situational awareness; experience and training, quality of flying skills, spatial orientation, health
and attitude, and cockpit manageability. Experience and training are something that cannot be
helped, but rather just needs to be gained over time and repetition. The quality of your flying
skills comes from the type of training you receive, how much attention was paid, and how much
information was retained. In being confident about ones flying skills, more attention can be

made to incorporate the rest of the things going on during flight rather than just holding and
maintaining certain items. Spatial orientation is something that cannot always be helped, but
certainly can be supplemented with the use of and trust in the aircrafts instruments. A pilots
physical and mental health and attitude are key to any flight. Anything that could deter the pilots
attention from the task at hand can cause various situations to occur if even a split second of
attention is lost. Cockpit manageability, or the pilots ability to manage the cockpit, its crew, and
all of the available resource to them, is vital. Keeping the situation in the cockpit under control,
calm and collected, makes for a good organized flight and makes it easier for the pilot to gauge
where their situational awareness is and even lift it.
The poor judgment chain is a theory that suggests that and accident is headed baa a series
of events and points of decision. The elements in the chain may not always happen in the same
order or the order in which they are supposed to. The chain may not be obvious to the pilot in
command or the rest of the flight crew. There is a so-called safety window where if the
situational awareness seems to be lower than necessary, the crew should consider either avoiding
the window until it is at its peak. Or, if the plane is already in the window, they should consider
leaving the window if any portion of situational awareness is lost. The window is physically a
block of airspace centered around the runway, and is where 80% of accidents occur. The window
extends from the surface to two thousand feet at ground level, and includes all of takeoff,
approach, and landing.