Pilot Situational Awareness

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1.0 Introduction
While air transportation is one of the safest and fastest ways of traveling, there are still some problems associated with it. While aircraft systems have developed so far to help aid the pilot, there are still some major issues that we still have. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) defines situational awareness as “the accurate perception and understanding of all the factors and conditions within the five fundamental risk elements (flight, pilot, aircraft, environment, and type of operation that comprise any given aviation situation) that affect safety before, during, and after the flight” (Aeronautical). With all of these factors playing a role in each flight, there is a risk of something happening during the flight to cause a negative outcome.

For a pilot, situational awareness begins far before the flight itself actually takes place. Unlike getting in a car, where the driver walks up and drives away, special and sometimes meticulous planning has to go into a flight. There are many phases that occur other than just the actual flight part that has to have attention paid to it.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is in charge of investigation aircraft accidents in the United States and compiles statistics of each accident. Part 135 is classified as air taxi operations meaning airlines. This data shows accidents for fixed wing aircraft, which most people travel on. Airline pilots have accumulated the most flight time out of most pilots in any other category. According to the NTSB, “Pilots involved in these accidents had an average total flight time of 5,459 hours, with a range from 611 to 16,010 hours, and an average time in the type of accident aircraft of 2,502 hours, with a range from...

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