AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2025 - 102

FLY WITH AOPA
ASI SAFET Y TIPS /
It's good to have a crystal ball
Situational awareness in flight is critical to safety
BY MACHTELD SMITH
action comes next, and mentally prepare
you for taking those next steps.
Spatial disorientation
A critical and dangerous result of losing situational
awareness is the potential for spatial
disorientation and subsequent loss of control
in flight. An accident that highlights this
risk happened on October 11, 2021, in Santee,
California. The pilot was accustomed to
commuting in his twin-engine Cessna
between his work in Arizona and home
in California. Even though the pilot was
familiar with the route, the accident flight's
outcome is an example of the serious consequences
of losing situational awareness and
allowing it to lead to spatial disorientation.
The National Transportation Safety
WHETHER WE FLY, drive, or walk, we need
situational awareness to assess potential
hazards and decide our next steps.
In aviation, such awareness is crucial in
identifying fundamental risks posed by our
flight, our privileges as pilot in command,
our aircraft, the type of flight operation we
conduct, and the three-dimensional environment
in which we operate the flight.
When we are aware of the circumstances
that surround our trip, we can be proactive
and use this information to decide
how it may impact our situation. We can
then adjust plans to ensure the flight's safe
outcome. Advancements in technology
have come a long way toward helping us
develop and maintain that mental picture
of our surroundings, provided we understand
the technologies' limitations.
Nevertheless, if we are exposed to a
high workload in the cockpit, it can impact
our ability to cope with the resulting stress.
Such task saturation can lead us to lose
vigilance and forget key information we
would otherwise recollect immediately.
And combined with a perceived threat, it
102
AOPA PILOT / March 2025
may heighten our anxiety and cause us to
become focused on that single threat factor.
This can result in tunnel vision and
poor decision making that puts us and our
passengers at risk. But there are a couple
of simple things we can do to arm against
losing situational awareness.
While still on the ground, complete
tasks that will alleviate some of the workload
after takeoff. For example, to help ease
navigation after takeoff and when transitioning
to cruise flight, load your flight plan
and its waypoints into the GPS, then verify
everything has been properly entered.
Next, set the active and standby communication
frequencies in the com radios to be
ahead of the game before getting airborne,
and again, verify accuracy.
In addition, if your aircraft has an
autopilot, use it to reduce stress and
fatigue. Whether it's a short but task-saturating
flight or a longer trip that might
be exhausting, the autopilot can provide
you with precious time. It frees you up to
monitor your current situation, confirm
that the flight is stable, look ahead at what
Board concluded that the accident's probable
cause was " Loss of control due to spatial
disorientation. " But there's a lot more to the
accident than those seven words can relay.
The AOPA Air Safety Institute (ASI) delved
deep into the accident flight, using available
information from the NTSB docket, witness
statements, and other relevant material that
provide indicators of what led up to the tragedy.
ASI's recently released video about this
accident follows the pilot on the flight from
Yuma, Arizona, to San Diego, California, and
it looks into the sequence of events, including
task saturation, that eventually led to a
dramatic and saddening crash.
Please review ASI's Accident Case
Study: Deadly Disorientation which provides
insights into how this accident could
have been avoided. The video uses FAA
ATC radio communication transcripts
and video animation to recreate what happened
and share critical lessons so we can
recognize and avoid similar mistakes.
machteld.smith@aopa.org
airsafetyinstitute.org/ACS/
DeadlyDisorientation
MIKE FIZER
http://www.airsafetyinstitute.org/ACS/DeadlyDisorientation http://www.airsafetyinstitute.org/ACS/DeadlyDisorientation
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2025

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - March 2025
