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to tend to do on the best of days. “Typically, these aren’t profes- sional pilots. They are business pro- fessionals that happen to be pilots who use their airplanes for business and leisure travel,” Laird said. “Risk management is not top of mind for them. It’s possible that many of them have never heard of the concept as it
regards their flying.”
So, Mr. or Ms. business pilot, you’re
left with dealing with each and every situation “on the fly.” Not the best course of action if safety is top of mind. But that may be changing. While risk management/mitigation hasn’t been stressed in flight training in the past, Larsen said that’s cur- rently evolving.
“Risk management competency is crucial because poor risk manage- ment is likely a root cause of most fatal light business airplane accidents. Accident root cause analysis is not always available from conventional data sources for many such accidents. Still, safety experts regularly make the connection between poor risk management and accidents/incidents where the root cause has been inves- tigated,” he said. “I believe we are in a transition period with complete incorporation of risk management into flight training programs.”
“For decades, the detailed regula- tory basis for pilot training, check rides, and proficiency checks were in the applicable Practical Test Stan- dards (PTS), which focused on knowl- edge and skills appropriate to tasks
within given areas of operation,” Larson added. “In the past decade, the FAA and industry began work to create Airman Certification Stan- dards (ACS) that replace PTS’s for all certificates and ratings.”
The new standards add detailed, applicable risk management elements to the knowledge and skills of tasks within areas of operation,” he said. “Those updates were originally re- leased in 2018-2019, though further changes have been made since.”
He also said that many training providers have or are updating their curricula and courseware to cover all elements of the applicable ACS, including the detailed risk manage- ment elements.
Single-Pilots Don’t Have to Go it Alone
While the concept of risk manage- ment/mitigation may be new to many pilots, the good news is that there are many aids to help you add it to your preflight planning without drastically increasing your workload. Training- Port.net has provided online courses for Single Pilot Resource Management (SRM) since Scott Macpherson intro- duced the company during the 2006 NBAA-BACE event.
“And 16 years later, our mission remains the same,” Laird explained, “To equip pilots with online training solutions that mitigate operational risks, elevate competency, and fa- cilitate continuous improvement. For example, our SRM (Single-Pilot
Resource Management) topic has seven lessons. They explore the ef- fective use of all resources available to single-pilot operators to meet the unique challenges they face while improving safety and efficiency. Each session takes 15 minutes to complete and can be completed all at once or spread out over time.”
TrainingPort.net’s seven SRM sec- tions include:
• Threat and Error Management.
• Communications.
• Situational Awareness.
• Workload Management and Decision Making.
• Fatigue, Pressure, and Stress
• Automation and Technology Management.
Laird said that from his experience, the most valuable part of the pro- gram is workload management and decision-making. Second, by a small margin, is automation and technology management. Not surprisingly, con- sidering the fact that in many cases, the first time a pilot sees these ad- vanced systems is in the airplane’s cockpit.
“Before I got into online training, I worked for a big simulator train- ing provider for LBA pilots,” he said. “Glass cockpits absolutely have a big impact on risk management. One of the biggest things I routinely found was that pilots were washing out because of their inability to
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