Is the emperor naked? It sure looks that way. The illusion here is based on the FAA’s belief that student pilots can be taught risk management skills. Learning to manage risk, however, requires prerequisite knowledge that student pilots typically do not have. So why does the FAA think that student pilots can be taught to manage risk?
The dictionary defines risk as “exposure to the chance of injury or loss.” The key word here is chance. Risk management assumes that you know the chance—the probability—that an event might occur. For student pilots (or any low-time pilot), event probability (risk) is difficult to evaluate. It requires a background in statistical analysis or extensive aviation experience from which probability assessments can be made. Students are not required to have the former and certainly are deficient in the latter.
A fundamental feature of the FAA’s Risk Management Handbook is the Risk Assessment Matrix. This chart requires knowing the probability that an event might occur, and its severity should it occur. Can we really expect students to possess either type of knowledge? This seems unreasonable to me.
If student pilots aren’t qualified to assess a risk, much less manage it, what should flight instructors teach them? The answer is hazard avoidance. A hazard is defined as a danger or a peril. It’s something concrete that students can be taught to identify and avoid. Calculating probability is not required here because a hazard is not a data point on a risk assessment matrix.
Student pilots are fully capable of avoiding in-flight hazards with a little training. All that’s needed is for their instructors to help them identify these hazards in specific and general terms.
Specific hazards are defined by the limitations placed on a student by the instructor or by the federal aviation regulations. An instructor might inform his or her students not to fly when the direct crosswind component exceeds a specific value, when the flight visibility is less than three miles, or when the flight cannot be made with visual reference to the surface, to name a few. Instructors can add as many additional items to the specific hazards list as necessary to ensure their student’s safety.
General hazards are best described in the succinct and condensed literary packages known as aviation aphorisms. These are wisdom-packed, hazard-avoidance lessons that students can easily remember: There’s nothing more useless than the altitude above you and the runway behind you. Takeoffs are optional but landings are mandatory. The only time you have too much fuel is when you’re on fire. The probability of survival is equal to the angle of arrival. Learn from the mistakes of others because you won’t live long enough to make all of them yourself. And so on.
These aphorisms are powerful behavior modifiers that can help student pilots make better decisions aloft, and they have nothing to do with risk assessment.
What’s the downside to speaking in terms of risk management at the student pilot level? There are three important reasons not to pretend you’re teaching students to assess risk when they’re not. First, students can’t manage risk unless they can assess it. Since they’re unlikely to have the skill to do this, they’re more likely to proffer a guess, instead. To the student pilot, risk assessment is guess assessment.
Second, an incorrect guess might result in the student making a poor decision while feeling confident of the outcome. There’s no upside to guessing wrong, then feeling you’ve chosen wisely.
Third, although highly experienced pilots can assess probabilities based on their experience, they typically don’t do this. Instead, they reduce their mental workload by identifying and avoiding areas of known danger. When an airline captain sees red on her airborne weather radar screen, she’s not thinking, “Red represents an area of 40 to 50 dBZs of radar reflectivity, which is statistically associated with a two percent chance of destructive turbulence.” Instead, she sees a hazard (a red-colored echo) and avoids all contiguous echoes associated with that hazard by at least 20 nautical miles.
If you’re a flight instructor and want to offer a practical lesson for your students, teach them to avoid hazards. Don’t teach them something that’s not practical for them to do. Avoid the illusion; embrace the practical.
