In my book, I distinguish between the characteristics of Novice, Proficient, and Master Class pilots. While novices lack knowledge and experience, they are highly motivated to learn and improve. Proficient pilots have reached a sufficient level of knowledge and experience and fly easily and comfortably every day. They settle into their comfort zone. Flying the line day-after-day, they become quite skilled with completing familiar procedures and flight profiles. As an undesirable byproduct of this ease and familiarity, they tend to reduce their attention focus and level of vigilance. Their habits, skills, and time-tested game plans deliver safe and effective daily operations. While this serves them well over the vast majority of their flights, it creates and hides latent vulnerabilities that can emerge when conditions interact.
Master Class pilots combine the best characteristics of both novice and proficient pilots. They resist settling into their comfort zone. This doesn’t mean that they seek discomfort. Instead, they proactively engage the routine of daily flying. They avoid the undesirable byproducts of reduced attention level, laxity, and procedural drift. I address each of these phenomena in great detail throughout the book. Master Class pilots nurture mindsets and practices that promote the search for deeper understanding of their aviation wisdom and of the flight operation.
This is reflected in the way that each class of pilots learn. From my book (pages 1-4):
1.1 HOW WE LEARN
Let’s begin with how we learn to perform a psychomotor task – any task that involves thinking and physical movement. A simplistic view of flying is that we perceive a series of indications from a variety of sources, form an understanding of what they mean, decide what action needs to be taken, and perform that action to a flight control or aircraft system. We guide the aircraft along a desired path by continuously repeating this process. This sounds simple enough, but in practice, it can become complicated by the volume of information and our ability to perceive and process it. It is further complicated by our decision-making process, training, repetition, environmental factors, quality of feedback, personal capabilities, and so much more. Consider the following process for completing a task.
- Perceive sensory inputs from our environment.
- Sort through these inputs and match them to recognized patterns.
- Apply meaning to the patterns.
- Choose a game plan that will move us from our present position toward our goal.
- Select decisions and actions that enact that game plan.
- Apply appropriate control inputs to the aircraft.
- Assess the effectiveness of our actions on the aircraft’s trajectory.
- Repeat the process for each follow-on adjustment.
The stream of thinking and flying happens so quickly that it appears to flow seamlessly from one aviation task to the next. It is much like a motion picture where each individual frame is followed by the next so quickly that it creates the experience of smooth motion. The mental effort and attention focus that we use to fly changes as we gain experience. To understand this better, consider pilots divided between three categories – novice, proficient, and Master Class. Each category engenders unique sets of abilities, motivations, perspectives, and behaviors.
1.1.1 How Novice Pilots Learn
Let’s skip ahead along our career path to a point where we begin training with our first airline as a newly hired FO. Everything is new and different. Whether our journey was through the traditional flight school track or through the military track, reaching our first airline job feels a bit like starting over. Even as fully certified pilots, starting with a new aircraft or in a new organization imposes a unique set of policies, procedures, and expectations. Everything feels unfamiliar.
At first, we experience information overload. We don’t know how to skillfully rank-order everything that is happening. It feels like there are too many demands on our time and attention. We struggle to filter and prioritize. Every piece of information needs to be detected, considered, and judged for relevance. Then, we need to choose whether to act on it, defer it, or ignore it. As we struggle to process everything, we find ourselves falling further and further behind the pace of the operation. This adversely affects our flying. We over-control or under-control the aircraft. All the while, new inputs arrive that demand our attention. More time is lost and we fall further behind. To control the flood, we start narrowing our focus. This promotes tunnel vision. We make lots of mistakes. As frustrating as these early days may seem, each repetition gives us valuable experience and practice. We rapidly improve.
This early learning phase requires a great deal of mental effort. The good news is that this isn’t our first flying experience. We apply skills and techniques that we learned with our previous aircraft to handle these new challenges. We have successfully accomplished novice learning many times in our past. We will succeed again. The novice phase is fast-paced, but our learning curve is steep.
1.1.2 How Proficient Pilots Learn
Over time, we continue to gain experience and knowledge through repetition and practice. We learn the tricks of the trade. What once was rough and challenging becomes smooth and easy. We fly the aircraft effortlessly. That same stream of sensory inputs that completely overwhelmed us as novices now seems easy to process. As proficient pilots, we have seen-it-all and done-it-all. We learn to combine inputs and tasks. Instead of perceiving and evaluating each sensory input, we recognize large blocks of information by how they match with familiar patterns. For example, consider a pilot cleared for a visual approach from the downwind while following another aircraft that is currently on base. The major decisions are managing energy (timing configuration changes, thrust, and speed to arrive stabilized on final), ensuring spacing (maintaining an acceptable distance behind the preceding aircraft), and judging the turn to final (smoothly transitioning from a level downwind through a descending turn to roll out on a stabilized final approach segment). Within each of these sub-tasks are dozens of embedded decisions requiring our skillful judgment.
We need to factor considerations like aircraft weight, speed, altitude, the preceding aircraft type, typical approach characteristics, weather parameters, runway layout, and many more. Novices see each of these as separate tasks to manage. Proficient pilots see the situation as one continuous flow with each portion connected to the next.
Another characteristic of proficient pilots is subconscious pattern recognition and decision making. If we ask a proficient pilot how they fly the base-to-final turn, we might get a vague answer like, “I know where the aircraft needs to be, and I just fly it there.” We know what looks right and fly the aircraft to reproduce that mental picture. Using this visualization technique, we not only interpret parameters accurately and quickly, but we anticipate future trends to stay ahead of changing conditions. This frees time and attention to monitor indications that are more subtle. This is why proficient pilots notice so much more than novices. While novices struggle to expand their situational awareness beyond the immediate confines of the flightdeck, proficient pilots easily extend their situational awareness to anticipate future conditions.
With repetition, we discover our comfort zone. We become more relaxed and confident. Proficiency is the level reached by the vast majority of us – good, capable, successful, and skillful pilots. As our comfort zone deepens, we form habits and routines to make each phase of the flight familiar and easy. Over time, these routines become automatic. We reach a point where we can do them without consciously thinking about them. Like our aircraft, we can complete many aviation tasks while our brains run on autopilot.
Proficient pilots who are settled in their comfort zones develop an expectation of normalcy – that this event will go just like it did the last 10, 100, or 1,000 times. While our pace of learning in the novice phase is fast, learning in the proficient phase slows. To be clear, the proficient level does not necessarily reflect capability or skill. Some proficient pilots are considered to be the finest pilots within their organizations. Other proficient pilots are content with mediocrity. Instead, the proficient level is characterized by the mental stasis we experience as we settle into our comfort zone. The key distinction is that proficient pilots reach their comfort zone and are content to remain there.
1.1.3 How Master class Pilots Learn
Master Class pilots commit themselves to move beyond the comfort zone accepted by proficient pilots. Pursuing mastery, we strive to deepen our knowledge and under- standing – both of our aviation profession and of ourselves. This requires sustained effort. Instead of settling into a comfort zone of automatic, subconscious, habitual routine, we actively pursue higher levels of understanding, awareness, and skill- refinement. This requires commitments to practice mindfulness, pursue knowledge, and contemplate ourselves. Not content to simply complete each task successfully, we strive to understand the many conditions, indications, interactions, and underlying processes that influence an effect or task. Even when we fly well, we ask ourselves questions. Why did this work out so well this time? What were the subtle indications that I need to incorporate into my monitoring routines? How can I improve my personal techniques to do this task better in the future? While proficient pilots are content to settle for successful performance, Master Class pilots strive to steadily raise their flying to higher levels of precision. Why go through the extra effort to pursue the Master Class level? There are three main benefits.
- Master Class pilots are better prepared to handle complex and non-standard situations. We are better prepared to handle the unexpected.
- Master Class pilots make better instructors and mentors. Like the wise elders of the tribe, we collect techniques to pass along to others.
- Master Class pilots find self-satisfaction through their pursuit of mastery. By approaching each task as a learning experience, every flight remains fresh and interesting.
