Section 10: Aeronautical Decision Making — Five Attitudes, Their Antidotes, and the Checklists That Catch You

The set, each with its inner monologue and its scripted counter: ANTI-AUTHORITY ('don't tell me what to do') -> 'follow the rules.' IMPULSIVITY ('do it quickly') -> 'not so fast, think first.' INVULNERABILITY ('this won't happen to me') -> 'it could happen to me.' MACHO ('I can do it' - not gender-limited, and per him the attitude most associated with real accidents) -> 'taking chances is foolish.' RESIGNATION ('what's the use?') -> keep working the problem - his recovery anecdotes are pilots who found their 'lost' drones days later because they didn't quit.

The meta-rule the exam also tests: neutralizing any of them starts with RECOGNIZING you're having the thought. And the flagged mapping: a scenario about 'taking risk in order to impress others' is MACHO, every time - 'a whole bunch' of these identification questions await.

Definitions as given: a HAZARD is 'the real or the perceived condition, an event or a circumstance that a pilot is going to encounter'; RISK is 'the assigned value that the potential impact of a hazard can have.' The assignment happens on a matrix: severity (negligible -> marginal -> catastrophic) against likelihood (improbable -> occasional -> probable). Catastrophic-and-probable demands action; the same hazard elsewhere on the grid may need only monitoring. The discipline is refusing to treat every hazard as maximum risk - or any as zero.

I'M SAFE audits the PILOT: Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, Emotional - and only the pilot in command judges fitness to fly. PAVE audits the FLIGHT, before every one: Pilot (run I'M SAFE), Aircraft (limitations, airworthiness), enVironment (weather, terrain, airspace, wires, traffic), External pressures (the client watching, the attitude creep). In-flight processing gets three models: the 5 P's (Plan, Plane, Pilot, Passengers - repurposed as crew/observers - Programming), the 3 P's (Perceive, Process, Perform), and DECIDE (Detect, Estimate, Choose, Identify, Do, Evaluate - which he candidly finds 'too long').

The honest capstone: experts eventually run AUTOMATIC decision-making - one imagined course of action, instantly, built from scenario training and habit, like braking for a deer. The alternative to training that reflex is the documented failure mode: freezing.

The loop: identify the hazard -> assess the risk -> analyze controls -> decide -> apply -> evaluate, repeating for as long as the operation runs. The four principles beneath it: accept no unnecessary risk; make risk decisions at the appropriate level (matched to your experience - don't let the least qualified person on site decide); weigh risk against the benefit of the activity; and integrate risk management into ALL planning, not as a bolt-on. The worked thread throughout: the drone descending out of a helicopter's altitude band.

CRM's definition is worth memorizing character-for-character because the exam wants it that way: 'the effective use of all available resources' - people (his 10-student shoot with observer teams), hardware, and pre-flight information. Flying alone invokes SRM - decision making, risk management, task management, and the underrated AUTOMATION MANAGEMENT: staying engaged while the computer flies, which he calls 'almost more stressful... than manual flying' because trust must be actively supervised.

CFIT - Controlled Flight Into Terrain - is the manned-aviation term for flying a WORKING aircraft into the ground unawares; mechanical failures don't qualify. The drone translation is his mapping-mission example: 50 ft AGL commanded, 50-ft hill unaccounted for. Situational awareness - 'knowing where you are at all time and knowing what is going on around you' - is the umbrella skill, and it mostly comes from hours.

The NINE PITFALLS: peer pressure; mindset (fixating on the shot after conditions changed - his birds-at-the-lighthouse case); scud running (sneaking under weather); continuing visual flight into cloud (= losing VLOS); getting behind the aircraft (sport-mode faster than your reflexes); loss of situational awareness (screen-staring); inadequate battery (his confession); flying outside the envelope (CG limits from section 2); skipping checklists - build a personal one, his includes the gimbal cover.

STRESS splits acute (situational - the sudden helicopter) from chronic (see a professional; don't fly under it), managed by relaxation, fitness, time management. The STERILE COCKPIT import: no non-flight chatter during critical phases - his cyclist-interruption anecdote. And the EIGHT ACCIDENT FACTORS the FAA catalogs: inadequate preflight planning, failure to maintain control, failure to see-and-avoid, fuel/battery mismanagement, improper in-flight decisions, misjudged distance/speed, unsuitable landing terrain, improper control operation (his own Phantom 1 crash closing the loop).