Squawking Human - Vectors for Safety

Practical Human Factors
Our Mission: To enhance aviation safety and performance by translating complex human factors research into actionable insights for the general aviation pilot.
Hot Cockpit, Slower Mind: The Effects of Heat on Pilot
As the summer sun settles in and temperatures climb, flying can take on a whole new kind of challenge—one that’s easy to underestimate. It’s not just about sweating it out in a warm cockpit. The real story begins well before takeoff, during those ramp activities like pulling the airplane out, fueling up, running through a preflight, and loading baggage. By the time we’re strapped in and ready to go, our bodies may already be working harder than we realize.
What’s happening behind the scenes is worth paying attention to. When we’re exposed to heat, our bodies start working overtime to keep things stable. Sweating helps cool us down, but it also drains fluids. Meanwhile, heart rates tick up as the body tries to move heat away from vital areas. Over time—especially on longer flights—this adds up. Tasks that normally feel routine can begin to feel just a bit more demanding, and that subtle shift can creep in faster than we’d expect.
The tricky part is that the early warning signs don’t always scream for attention. We might notice we’re a little thirstier than usual, maybe dealing with a dull headache, or feeling slightly fatigued or lightheaded. Sometimes it shows up as difficulty concentrating—that fuzzy “brain fog” feeling. These aren’t dramatic symptoms, but they’re the body’s way of signaling that it’s under stress. If we let them go too long, they can escalate into something more serious, like heat exhaustion, bringing nausea, rapid breathing, or even fainting into the picture.
For pilots, even mild symptoms matter. Heat doesn’t just affect comfort—it can chip away at performance. Things like coordination, reaction time, and decision-making can all take a hit. We might find ourselves rechecking a checklist more than usual, scanning less effectively, or reacting a bit slower than normal. These small changes can become especially critical during high-workload phases like approach and landing, where precision and timing are everything.
One of the biggest misconceptions is relying on thirst as a guide. By the time we feel thirsty, dehydration may already be setting in enough to affect performance. Add in factors like direct sunlight, limited airflow in the cockpit, and even what we’re wearing, and it’s easy to see how a “slightly warm” start can turn into noticeable fatigue by the end of a flight.
It helps to stay alert for subtle in-flight cues. Increasing irritability, slower thinking, or having to reread checklist items can all be signs that heat is starting to interfere. Feeling lightheaded during maneuvers or developing a headache while sweating more than usual are also worth paying attention to. If symptoms escalate to nausea or confusion, that’s a strong signal that the situation needs immediate attention—reducing workload and reassessing the plan becomes essential.
The biggest takeaway here is that heat is often a gradual threat. It doesn’t arrive with flashing lights or obvious alarms. Instead, it quietly wears down performance over time. That’s what makes it so important for all of us to recognize the signs early and stay proactive.
At the end of the day, staying safe in the summer heat comes down to awareness and preparation. Understanding how our bodies respond, keeping hydrated, and checking in with how we feel throughout a flight can make all the difference. Because when it comes to flying, staying cool isn’t just about comfort—it’s about staying sharp where it matters most.
Situational Awareness - A Deeper Look
Two-Part Series
It's more than knowing what is going on around us.
We've all been told...
...by instructors, seasoned pilots, and safety presenters—how essential situational awareness (SA) is. Yet very few of us have ever had someone clearly explain what SA actually is or how tostrengthen it. For most pilots, that explanation simply never happens.
Part-1
Most of us carry a vague sense of what SA means, but do we truly know when we have it, when it’s slipping, or how to improve it? This article aims to break SA down into its core components, explain how it works, and offer practical ways to build and maintain it.
At its simplest, situational awareness is often described as “knowing what’s going on around you.” That’s true—but it’s also incomplete. If most people had strong SA, we wouldn’t see so many everyday counterexamples: the pedestrian crossing a busy street while texting with earbuds in; the single pilot in a high performance turboprop reviewing a spreadsheet during cruise; the driver navigating rush hour traffic while absorbed in a tense phone call. Contrast those with a professional pilot flying an approach to minimums—checklists complete, configuration set, and precise monitoring of course, glidepath, and airspeed. That’s SA in action.
Situational awareness isn’t just seeing the environment. It’s the continuous process of building, updating, and validating a mental model of the current situation—along with any emerging risks or opportunities.
To do that well, SA relies on several core cognitive skills and supporting mental functions. Strengthening those skills is the key to maintaining an accurate, resilient picture of what’s happening now and what might happen next.
The main skills
Attention. The ability to notice the right cues and filter out distractions is foundational to situational awareness.
Perception. We must accurately detect what is happening in the environment before we can understand it.
Working memory. We must hold relevant details in mind long enough to combine them into a coherent picture.
Comprehension. This is the step where perceived data is interpreted and assigned meaning.
Pattern recognition. Comparing current cues with familiar patterns helps us spot normal conditions, deviations, and emerging threats.
Projection. Strong situational awareness includes anticipating what is likely to happen next, not just understanding the present.
Executive control. This includes updating priorities, switching attention as conditions change, and resisting tunnel vision under stress.
For a pilot, situational awareness is not just “seeing” the approach; it is continuously building and updating a mental model of aircraft state, runway environment, weather, traffic, and threats. The better those cognitive skills work together, the easier it is to recognize when the situation is still safe or when a change or adjustment should be made.
The recognized expert in SA is Mica Endsley, a former Chief Scientist for the United States Air force. Her three-level cognitive process consists of perception, comprehension, and projection. It treats situational awareness as a state of knowledge about what is happening now and what is likely to happen next, rather than as a decision or action itself.
The three levels
Level 1: Perception. Notice the relevant elements in the environment. For pilots that would be such as instruments, aircraft state, traffic, weather, or runway cues.
Level 2: Comprehension. Understand what those elements mean together in the current context, not just as separate facts.
Level 3: Projection. Predict what will happen soon.
Endsley’s model is useful because it helps explain where awareness breaks down: something was not seen, not understood, or not anticipated. It is widely used in high-risk fields like aviation because it connects human cognition to system design, training, and error prevention.
Why Situational Awareness Fails
Even experts experience "SA drops." Most accidents aren't caused by a lack of skill, but by a breakdown in awareness. Common culprits include:
Tunnel Vision: Getting so focused on one specific task (like an unexpected fuel indication or a problem with a navigation display) that we miss the bigger picture (like the fact that we are rapidly approaching rising terrain).
Fatigue and Stress: Physical exhaustion narrows your "cognitive scan," making you miss Level 1 data.
Confirmation Bias: Only noticing information that fits what you expect to see, rather than what is actually happening.
“Loss of situational awareness” is often cited in aviation accident reports. More commonly, however, the reports show that the pilot lost situational awareness, while the probable cause identifies the underlying reason such as distraction.
Our next article in this series will provide some ideas on how we can work to improve our SA, both in our flying and in our other endeavors.
Part 2
Part 1 of this series explained some of the mechanisms involved in situational awareness (SA). Since we all could use a boost in our SA, this article will provide some practical ways that we can work to improve our SA.
Our first step might be to train our perception for better SA. W do that by teaching the brain to notice the right cues faster and more completely, then verify those cues against a mental model of “what normal looks like.” In aviation, the most effective methods are structured scanning, scenario-based practice, and deliberate cue-recognition drills that reduce tunnel vision and missed information.
Here are some ways to accomplish that:
Scenario-based training: Set up flights with a little extra spice—weather, traffic, higher workload, maybe a quirky system acting up. It gets you used to spotting those tiny changes before they turn into something annoying.
Guided observation drills: Before you dive into a task, take a quick beat and ask yourself, “What am I seeing, hearing, or feeling right now?” It’s a simple habit that sharpens your ability to catch cues early.
Kim’s Game / recall drills: Glance at a scene for a moment, then try to list everything you remember. It’s surprisingly good at boosting how accurately you notice and recall details.
Peripheral vision training: Practice keeping your awareness wide instead of tunnel visioned. It helps you catch traffic, attitude drift, or runway cues you’d otherwise miss.
Cross-check discipline: Keep bouncing between the outside world, your instruments, and what the airplane should be doing. It keeps your perception honest and grounded.
What if briefings: Before or during a scenario, ask yourself, “If something changed right now, what would matter most?” That little mental exercise trains you to notice those exact changes when they show up.
Fire up the simulator or take a safety pilot along! Try this:
1. Fly a normal approach.
2. At random points, identify the five most important cues you can perceive right now.
3. Say what has changed since the last scan.
4. State which cue would make you consider a go-around.
Here are some recommended daily exercises:
Five-senses check-in. Pause and consciously note what you can see, hear, feel, smell, and sense in your environment. This helps you stay present and reduces autopilot mode.
Observation drill. Pick a scene, study it for 30 to 60 seconds, then look away and recall as many details as possible. This strengthens attention and memory for relevant cues.
Pattern recognition practice. Compare what you see now with what “normal” looks like, then identify anything unusual or changing. This helps you spot deviations earlier.
What-if scenarios. Ask, “If this changes, what would I do?” or “What’s the next likely event?” This builds anticipation and projection.
Perspective shift. Look at the same environment from another person’s point of view and describe what they might notice or miss. This broadens attention and reduces tunnel vision.
nformation filter exercise. Practice separating important cues from background noise, clutter, or distractions. This helps you focus on what matters most under workload.
Reflection pause. At the end of the day, review one situation and ask: What did I notice? What did I miss? What did I expect next? That closes the loop and improves future awareness.
A practical 5-minute routine is:
Do a 30-second five-senses check-in.
Pick one scene and recall details.
Name one abnormal cue.
State one likely next event.
Just as we can improve our landings by training and practice, we can improve our situational awareness by exercising our brains.
Visual Scanning
Eyes on the Horizon: The Science and Art of the Visual Scan
For a general aviation pilot, the cockpit is a place of freedom, but itis also a high-stakes environment where the "See and Avoid" doctrine
is the primary line of defense.
While modern cockpits are increasingly cluttered with iPad moving maps and ADS-B "in" traffic alerts, the most sophisticated piece of safety equipment remains the three-pound organ sitting between the pilot's ears, wired to the two globes in their sockets.

Effective visual scanning is not just "looking out the window." It is a deliberate, physiological process that requires an understanding of how our eyes and brains cooperate—and occasionally conspire against us—to detect a tiny speck of aluminum moving at 150 knots.

To understand why we miss traffic, we first have to understand how the eye is built. The retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye, is not uniform. It is divided into two distinct regions that serve very different purposes: the fovea and the peripheral area.
The fovea is a tiny, central pit responsible for our sharpest vision. It is packed with cones, allowing us to see fine detail and color. However, the fovea only covers a field of about two degrees—roughly the width of your thumbnail at arm’s length. To truly "see" a distant aircraft and identify its heading, that image must fall directly onto the fovea.
In contrast, the peripheralvision is dominated by rods. While it’s terrible at identifying detail, itis incredibly sensitive to light changes and motion. In a cockpit, your periphery is your "early warning system." It detects a flicker of movement or a change in contrast, which then triggers the brain to command the neck and eyes to slew the fovea toward the target for identification.
If you think your vision is as smooth, continuous movie, your brain is lying to you. When you move your eyes
from the altimeter to the horizon, your eyes don't "glide"; they jump in rapid movements called saccades.
During a saccade, the brain actually shuts off the visual feed to prevent the world from looking like a
motion-blurred mess. This is known as saccadic suppression. If an aircraft is small enough or moving at a specific relative angle, it can literally "disappear" into the gaps between your eye movements. If you sweep your head across the horizon too quickly, you are effectively blind for a significant percentage of that sweep.
Furthermore, the brain is an expert at "filling in the blanks." We all have a physiological blind spot where the optic nerve attaches to the retina. The brain uses surrounding data to paint over this hole. In a high-wing Cessna or a low-wing Piper, a door pillar or a wing can easily hide a conflicting aircraft. If that aircraft is on a "constant bearing, decreasing range" trajectory—meaning it’s on a collision course—it will appear stationary in your windshield, making it even harder for your peripheral rods to detect.
The brain also struggles with "nothingness." When a pilot flies in haze, over open water, or in a featureless blue sky, the eyes suffer from Empty Field Myopia. Without a distant object to focus on, the eye muscles naturally relax, and the focal point drifts to a distance of only about three to five feet. Essentially, the pilot becomes nearsighted, looking at the windscreen rather than through it.
Then there is the issue of background clutter. An aircraft low on the horizon can easily blend into the "noise" of city lights, checkered fields, or jagged terrain. The brain is programmed to prioritize high-contrast objects. A white airplane against a white cloud is a recipe for a "late-detection" scenario.

Given these biological limitations, a "lazy" scan is a dangerous scan. Pilots should be taught to use a block system. Instead of a continuous sweep, the pilot should divide the sky into segments of about 10 degrees each.
Focus: Look at a specific 10-degree block of sky
Pause: Hold the gaze for at least one to two seconds. This allows the fovea to settle and "burn" an image into the brain, overcoming saccadic suppression.
Shift: Move to the next adjacent block.
By methodically moving from left to right (or right to left) and overlapping these blocks, the pilot ensures that the foveal "searchlight" covers the entire critical area. It’s also vital to move the head to "peek" around window pillars, as a thin strip of aluminum can easily hide a jumbo jet at three miles.
In 2026, we have more tools than ever. ADS-B and synthetic vision are literal lifesavers, but they introduce a new risk: inside-the-cockpit syndrome. Research shows that pilots with traffic displays often spend more time looking down at the screen than they do looking out the window, trying to "find" the target on the glass first.
Let's up our game and practice good visual scanning.
Squawking Human Archive
Visit the archive for more human factors articles.
Click the button below to visit our Media Site, then select the "Sq Human Archive" tab for the drop down menu.
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Practical Human Factors

Hot Cockpit, Slower Mind: The Effects of Heat on Pilot

Situational Awareness - A Deeper Look

Two-Part Series

It's more than knowing what is going on around us.

We've all been told...

Part-1

Part 2

Visual Scanning

Eyes on the Horizon: The Science and Art of the Visual Scan

For a general aviation pilot, the cockpit is a place of freedom, but itis also a high-stakes environment where the "See and Avoid" doctrineis the primary line of defense.

Squawking Human Archive

Visit the archive for more human factors articles.Click the button below to visit our Media Site, then select the "Sq Human Archive" tab for the drop down menu.

For a general aviation pilot, the cockpit is a place of freedom, but itis also a high-stakes environment where the "See and Avoid" doctrine
is the primary line of defense.

Visit the archive for more human factors articles.
Click the button below to visit our Media Site, then select the "Sq Human Archive" tab for the drop down menu.