During a recent five-year period, there were almost 500 spatial disorientation accidents in the United States. Most of these accidents resulted in one or more fatalities. One psychologist thinks that panic — emotions that overcome a pilot's ability to reason or process information — causes some of these accidents. Panic may explain why, over the years, well-trained pilots haven't righted their airplanes, turned on an autopilot, or uttered a single word in the minutes preceding fatal crashes.
The John F. Kennedy Jr. crash (see " Safety Pilot: Landmark Accidents: Vineyard Spiral," September 2000 Pilot) is probably the most well-known recent accident that seems to fit this scenario.
Psychologist Richard Komm of Psychological Services in San Francisco has woven together his panic theory by examining information related to thinking styles and the hard-wired connections in the brain. What can a pilot who suspects he's wired with a low panic threshold do to lessen his risks in flight?
Spatial disorientation — get used to it
"Since the flight environment is totally abnormal compared to the environment humans were designed for, I see fearful pilots all the time," says Rich Stowell, a noted emergency maneuvers flight instructor from Santa Paula, California. Fear, or stress, is common when we feel that "all is not as it should be." The cues we rely on for balance, orientation, and perception on the ground are easily, and predictably, fooled in flight. The result is often momentary confusion. In small doses it's not that uncommon.
In November 2000, AVweb, an Internet-based aviation site, asked its subscribers if they had ever experienced spatial disorientation in flight. Eighty-four percent of the 610 respondents answered yes. This response indicates that spatial disorientation (SD) should be grouped with other aviation experiences under the category of "there are those who have [experienced SD] and those who will."
The senses — vision; the proprioceptive system, which includes the muscles, joints, tendons, and skin; and the vestibular, or inner-ear, system — that work so well on the ground are ill-suited for guiding us in an airplane when reference to the natural horizon is lost. When we try to rely on our senses in a zero-horizon situation the results are so predictable that they are listed in texts for primary flight students under names such as the Coriolis illusion, inversion illusion, and the leans.
Student pilots commonly encounter spatial disorientation. During instrument training these encounters become more common. One of the AVweb respondents went so far as to say that "anyone who flies IFR and says he hasn't [suffered spatial disorientation] is a (ahem) liar. It's part of IFR flying." Twenty-two percent of those who replied said they had experienced SD during training.
More than 86 percent of the respondents said that their confusion in SD was overcome by focusing on the instruments.
Vertigo and the flight review
During primary training and flight reviews, flight examiners attempt to induce spatial disorientation. After a few maneuvers the student is asked to gain control of the airplane and return it to straight-and-level flight while referring only to flight instruments.
This exercise is designed to help pilots recognize spatial disorientation, and to reinforce the idea that bodily cues must be ignored if they conflict with the flight instruments. Instrument flying skills aren't intuitive, but they can be taught and the skills maintained through practice.
Knowing the causes and conditions that lead to SD isn't always enough to keep a few pilots from losing control. Personality factors may explain why some pilots lose control of their airplanes.
Komm gave a presentation titled "Spatial Disorientation in IMC: Personality Correlates and Implications" at EAA AirVenture 2002. One of the ideas is that some pilots are born with a gift for taking in everything around them as a whole. That was probably good when the number of carnivores outnumbered the number of people on Earth, but when stressors such as turbulence, icing, and low visibilities pile up during a flight these pilots have a difficult time prioritizing all the inputs from their senses. And when they feel overloaded, they panic.
Field independent vs. field dependent
"At least 90 percent of pilots are easily adaptable to concentrating, but there is a small percentage that have difficulty detaching from sensory inputs," said Stowell. Komm, a Beechcraft Bonanza pilot with more than 5,000 hours, points to long-term studies indicating that there are two cognitive (knowing or learning through factual information) styles — referred to as field independent and field dependent. Field in this case means context or surroundings.
This is important for pilots because the person who is field independent (FI) is naturally more adept at separating the task at hand (flying a flight plan with reference to instruments, for instance) from other (sound, tactile, and visual) inputs to his senses. These people seem to be naturally resistant to sensory overload. They are aware of, but are able to separate themselves from, their surroundings.
Field dependent (FD) pilots, on the other hand, are naturally disposed to focus on the whole. They take in the whole instrument panel rather than the two most important reference instruments — the artificial horizon and the directional gyro. Everything coming through the senses to a field dependent brain has equal importance — the instruments, and the sound of rain against the airframe, and the ice forming on the wing, and the turbulence felt in the seat of the pants. If the FD pilot ever gets into a situation where stressors pile up quickly, he may become unable to separate tasks and become overwhelmed. If he survives the overload, he will truthfully answer, "Yes, I saw the warning light, but I couldn't figure out what it meant" or "The horn was so loud I couldn't think." Daniel Goleman, author of the book Emotional Intelligence, calls this situation emotional hijacking.
Emotional hijacking
To understand Goleman's theory of emotional hijacking it's necessary to understand that the brain has two jobs — to think rationally and to feel emotionally. Flying is an activity that uses the rational (thinking) part of the brain, yet even rational thinkers who tend to see each daily activity as an opportunity to sense, evaluate, and decide on the appropriate action have to admit that feelings are powerful.
Goleman says, "The more intense the feeling, the more dominant the emotional side becomes — and the more ineffectual the rational."
The power of emotion over logic can be attested to by any professional pilot after a session in a full-motion simulator — the logical brain knows that it's on the ground in a fake flying machine, but that doesn't prevent the emotional brain from ratcheting up the body's responses to deal with the perceived threat to its well-being.
In general, field dependent people are more oriented toward other people and social relationships; they like to work with others toward a goal and are sensitive to the feelings of others. Field independent people are more oriented toward objects and tend to focus on topics rather than associations. They also prefer to work independently; they like to compete and gain individual recognition and are inattentive to their social environment when working.
There's another important difference. The field independent pilot is better able to perceive parts of the whole as separate from the whole, while the field dependent pilot is not as good at breaking the field up into its various parts. This means that the FI pilot finds it easier to prioritize his tasks, while the FD pilot is more likely to meld everything together. Goleman's book explains that the emotional part of the brain is where the flight-or-fight responses to stress or danger originate, and that in times of emotional emergencies, the logical part of the brain defers to the more basic emotional, or limbic, part of the brain. Studies prove that we've been wired this way for a long time.
Short circuit to the emotional side
Goleman cites research by Joseph LeDoux that proves that sensory inputs reach the brain by two paths, and that the pathway to the emotional center is markedly shorter than the pathway to the reasoning side of the brain. This "short circuit" means that the emotional side of the brain reacts before the reasoning side of the brain can inquire, evaluate, and decide on a course of action. This hard-wired arrangement explains why we feel keyed up for a few minutes after a momentary engine power sag or surge. Before our rational mind has started scanning gauges, processing data, and deciding on action, our emotional mind has acted on a perceived threat. As Goleman says in his book, "Raw emotion is triggered independent of, and prior to, thought."
When the brain senses an emergency or alarm situation, large amounts of adrenaline are pumped into the system almost instantaneously. This brings about changes that include an increased heart rate, vascular restriction, intense unease, more rapid breathing, and an almost total fixation on the need to "confront" or "run" from the threat. This fixation is the crux of the panic response.
Stress pileup
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident and incident reports ( www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/month.asp) are rife with examples of stress. These vary from a report of an elevated voice tone squeaking from the radio of a first-time solo pilot to a report containing the last words of a pilot as he battled for control of his airplane while begging controllers for help.
Even with the best intentions and planning, pilots will encounter poor weather and equipment that fails unexpectedly. There may come a day when the weather at the destination is worse than forecast, the rain is heavier, the air is rougher, the ceilings are lower than ever before, and the first approach has been missed. One at a time these factors become stressors. When they're piling up faster than the pilot can cope with them, there are only two options — deal with them or stress out. According to Komm, the pilot with the field dependent nature is more likely to stress out.
The field dependent pilot is built to gather in all the events going on around him — and he may reach a point where there's just too much going on. Since 90 percent of our orientation relies on vision, field dependent pilots may have difficulty assigning the same importance to a small panel-mounted instrument or display as they do to a well-defined natural horizon. Whatever the cause, at some point emotions take over. Then comes panic.
What is panic? In this case, panic can be described as a situation where the pilot's emotions have overridden his ability to make a decision, or to logically and rationally process the information coming into the brain. This brain-locked state offers one explanation for why trained pilots flying well-equipped airplanes lose control of their aircraft when an action as simple as turning on an autopilot would restore normal flight.
Prepare, prepare, prepare
How can a pilot tell if he has a field dependent cognitive style? It's important to realize that field dependent pilots can have problem-focused coping skills and that field independent pilots can use emotion-focused coping strategies. So having a field dependent style doesn't mean that a pilot should never consider flying in stressful situations; it just means that he must be extra vigilant.
Komm suggests that field dependent pilots should prepare for instrument flying by taking steps to lessen the likelihood and impact of stress. Installing backup electrical or vacuum systems (see " Airframe & Powerplant: Standby for Safety," April 2001 Pilot) provides a cushion between normal flight conditions and the loss of one of these primary systems. Simple upgrades such as these can turn a panic-inducing situation into a semi-important maintenance problem.
Flying in instrument conditions is no place to kowtow to others. Since the field dependent pilot is likely to be concerned with the feelings of his passengers, these pilots will have to brief their passengers and, at the earliest onset of stress, be willing to say, "I am very busy now and I need to concentrate on flying the airplane. You must be quiet and not bother me," when a passenger clamors for attention or explanation.
Field dependent pilots should make it a point to go flying with instructors who recognize and are willing to challenge the pilot's fears. By staying current, and regularly pushing up against the edge of their stress limits, pilots who are aware of their nature can learn to recognize the onset of stress and develop strategies for dealing with it before it overcomes them.
There's nothing worse than being up there and being willing to give anything to be down here. If Komm is right, some of us are not equipped to fly anywhere near our personal danger zone. Safe flying depends on many things, and personality may play a bigger role than we previously thought.
E-mail the author at [email protected].
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