SA F E T Y capacity, because the choices and decisions you make travelling at 320 knots under pressure will often not be your best. More interestingly, McSpadden hypothesised that the closer the in-flight decisions are to the brief, the safer a flight will be; it is when we experience an unforeseen eventuality that we are more likely to cause an accident. Again, all of this seems somewhat obvious. Its why we have the preflight and pre-approach brief. However, indulge me in a short thought experiment for a moment. Its an early morning flight; too early, you know the ones. The aircraft has been checked; you have or havent run the preflight, but you do need to get the brief done. Maybe you are flying with someone you know quite well, and its a familiar sector. Turnaround is tight and the weather is coming in, but with a bit of good luck and your combined knowledge you will return to base soon enough. The departure brief goes smoothly for the most part, and you look across at your colleague before the words happy with the standard emergency brief? roll out of your mouth. Sound familiar? Complacency. The reality of the job is such that these shortcuts are used by pilots regularly. Maybe its an emergency brief. Maybe you have flown the same STAR into Heathrow enough times with the same co-pilot that you dont need to spend the whole time running though the numbers. You are both competent crew, after all. But there is an insidious threat that indulges this thought process: experience. You have flown this sector hundreds of times; you know the routings and points; in fact, you can probably guess exactly where air traffic will break you off the standard arrival with 90% accuracy. But how prepared will you be when something doesnt go according to the norm and how likely will you be The unfortunate truth of commercial flight is that we rarely have the luxury of time... shortcuts exist for a purpose to deviate from SOPs? Crucially, how often does your daily experience apply to, and assist in, those emergency situations? Cockpit gradient The infamous cockpit gradient used to be one of the major contributors to accidents in aviation. Thankfully, while it is still certainly present (yes, I am talking about that captain or co-pilot) it is largely true that the mentality of sit down, flaps up, shut up has been replaced by a modern-day perfidious complacency. Briefings are designed to create shared mental models of the procedures we enact every day. And while we plan for the unexpected go arounds, abnormal single engine work and other deviations push us into situations we mainly experience once a year in a check ride. The unfortunate truth of commercial flight is that we rarely have the luxury of time. It would be nice to run through a full brief every day, but sometimes that isnt economical or even worse a good use of the time you have available. The shortcuts exist for a purpose and are beneficial to the reality of day-to-day operations. If you have just flown the same sector in the morning with the same crew, do you really need to run through a full brief again? A review of the process should be sufficient to put the crew into a shared mental space. But stay vigilant on complacency: this is acceptable on clear sky days, but perhaps with stronger weather or more adverse conditions it would be wise to take the time to review things properly. As ever, briefings need to be tailored to the days parameters and not simply used as generic templates. If your plan has covered the issues you can expect, you are far more likely to follow the SOPs when things go wrong. McSpadden noted that we should be vigilant against impromptu decision-making in the cockpit. To be unbriefed is to be unsure. A rise in fatalities Why does all this matter? Hopefully not a question any pilot would be asking, but nonetheless a relevant one. There were five accidents with fatalities in 2022. 16 THE LOG Win 24 pp14-17 Flight Safety.indd 16 01/12/2023 14:40