Page 32 - April 2017 Twin & Turbine

Twin Proficiency
by Thomas P. Turner Pilot Belief System
Confirmation bias can lead pilots to
act on their belief of what is happening, despite evidence that the opposite is occurring
Say you are solo in a very familiar aircraft, approaching a busy but familiar airport. The tower controller clears you to land on Runway 20L at Orange County/John Wayne Airport (KSNA), the shorter and narrower of the two parallel runways, and you correctly read back the landing
clearance. As you near the airport, however, for whatever reason you align yourself with the equal length but even narrower Taxiway C, even though a Boeing 737 with six crew and 110 passengers aboard is stopped on Taxiway L, directly blocking what you think is your assigned runway, the flight was holding short of 20L for your landing. You see the 737 right in front of you; you even ask the tower if it’s supposed to be there. Still, focused on your landing, you overfly the jetliner, reportedly 125 feet above Taxiway L according to radar data. Despite the anomalies, you continue and make what you think is a normal landing, on Taxiway C.
Or perhaps you are loading a flight plan into your FMS and type the wrong identifier. Taking off, you don’t detect your mistake until you have flown far enough you’re committed to land in the wrong country, on the wrong continent.
Used to departing from a familiar airport westbound, unusual weather conditions require you to take off to the east in IMC. Cleared for a SID, after departure you turn 90 degrees to the left, which is correct the way you usually depart, but this time aims you directly at a cloud-obscured mountain ridge.
Or this scenario: Cleared for the visual in night VMC, you see the runway ahead and slightly to the left. Although you have the approach programmed into your navigation system and it shows you slightly left of course, you continue to correct further to the left to line up with the runway. Touching down, you see the runway end lights racing toward you and apply maximum braking, coming to a stop with almost no runway remaining. Only then do you realize you’ve landed at the wrong airport, on a runway barely long enough for a short-field landing in your airplane.
In each of these real-world events, no one was hurt and there is no damage. No “accident” occurred. But clearly the pilots were not fully in command of each flight. How can this happen? How can we avoid similar situations?
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is defined as “the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.” Our brains naturally tend to discard data that does not fit our preconceived notions, and grasp at little things that may support what we think we are seeing. Writing in Psychology Today, Professor Shahram Heshmat, Ph.D., notes:
“Confirmation bias occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When people would like a certain idea/concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to stop gathering
30 • TWIN & TURBINE
April 2017