Trust your Instinct

When something strikes you as odd, there is a reason for it.

Experience with any complicated task will make the operator wiser. Wisdom while flying, or making time critical ORM decisions outside of the planning environment, may come in the form of intuition, aka: “the hair on the back of your neck”. This intuition has many names, but the experienced aviator will hear and listen to this intuition when it tells him “somethings wrong”. In this discussion I draw an invisible (and very subjective) line between “intuition” and “decision making”, which is flirting with semantics and admittedly abstract, but hang with me.

Decision making occurs when the operator is consciously aggregating numerous pieces of information to decide on a particular course of action. “Decision making” as described here, can be time critical, but that time is usually measured in minutes instead of seconds. The most obvious example is evaluating weather in the pre-flight planning room, and choosing how to react to a particular challenge. Decision making becomes more challenging and more important airborne, once the “no-go” can morph into the “Go, or divert to somewhere unplanned, unfamiliar and undesired” option… or something like that. Being able to gather information and choose a course of action that balances mission success and safety is a skill we should all be continually honing.

Intuition in this case is used to describe a fleeting observation that sounds a subconscious and often times very quiet mental alarm that may sound something like “this is not normal”. There are unlimited catalysts for this feeling, and the ability to hear and diagnose it requires experience, and hopefully a good CFI who can humbly pass lessons learned. It may come in the form of unexpected wind noise as your airspeed accelerates during spatial disorientation, or an unusual trouble slowing down on final because your landing gear is still up. When we perceive an overshooting turn to final, we should immediately make sure we are not subconsciously pushing on the inside rudder. Most of us have been on an instrument approach and observed conflicting navigation information, normally due to a mistakes in displays or radio tuning, and felt the hesitation to question our previously held (and now questionable) SA. Whatever the situation, it is critical to listen to your intuition.

Flight instructors, particularly new ones, should be even more cognizant of their intuition. Teaching landing is the most critical task for this, since as far as I know, nobody since Orville has gotten landing right on their first try. Your student doesn’t know what an approach turn is suppose to look like, so if they are off parameters it could be because they think they are right, or they know they are wrong and don’t know how to fix it. The ground rush and feeling of “speed” can make it very hard for the new student to articulate much of anything when their SA bubble starts to shrink, so keep your guns up. The most challenging and disorienting situation for the CFI may be when a student is adamant that “they had it” after you take the controls on an attempted landing. As the instructor, be confident in your intuition of the students’ performance, and of course gracious to your students.

When the hair on the back of your neck raises, we need to be able to get to our happy place. The disorientated aviator must know what to reference to get back to straight and level, the one overshooting final-approach must be able and willing to go around. Get back to straight and level, figure out where you are if required, and start your last checklist over. We should strive to be able to make an evidence-based explanation for why something was different, avoid speculation, take corrective action bring yourself back to a normal sight picture. CFI’s must be able to provide for safety of flight, and then explain to the student why you took action, and give them as measurable of a correction as possible (ex: I will have to take control if you are “X” number of feet off of centerline).

The final consideration with handling your intuition is the avoidance of paranoia. Paranoia is unhealthy, unproductive and will make you hate flying. The amount of noises, engine and navigation parameters and environmental considerations that you perceive will invariably increase as you fly more. The best way to avoid paranoia is to ensure you have thorough checkout and training with a qualified instructor for every new airplane you fly. Conduct a checkride style profile, with steep turns, slow flight etc. to get an idea what “normal” and “not normal” feels like, and learn what the common engine and systems management pitfalls are. When your intuition tells you something is out of ordinary, fly the airplane, avoid panic, get away from the ground and try to understand what set off your internal alarms prior to attempting the task again.