The ability of the United States Air Force (USAF) to sustain a high level of operational ability and readiness is dependent on the proficiency and expertise of its pilots. Recruitment, education, training, and retention of its pilot force are crucial factors in the USAF's attainment of its operational mission: defense of this nation and its allies. Failure of a student pilot during a training program does not only represent a loss of costly training expenditures to the American public, but often consists of loss of human life, aircraft, and property. This research focused on the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps' (AFROTC) selection method for student pilots for the light aircraft training (LATR) program. The LATR program is an intense 16 day flight training program that precedes the Air Force's undergraduate pilot training (UPT) program. The study subjects were 265 AFROTC cadets in the LATR program. A variety of independent variables from each subject's higher education curricular background as well as results of preselection tests, participation in varsity athletics, prior flying experience and gender were evaluated against subsequent performance in LATR. Performance was measured by a quantitative performance score developed by this researcher based on 28 graded training factors as well as overall pass or fail of the LATR program. Study results showed participation in university varsity athletics was very significantly and positively related to performance in the LATR program, followed by prior flying experience and to a very slight degree portions of the Air Force Officers Qualifying Test. Not significantly related to success in the LATR program were independent variables such as grade point average, scholastic aptitude test scores, academic major, gender and the AFROTC selection and ranking system.

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No description available.

No description available.

Task prioritization performance was evaluated for pilots who participated in a concurrent task management (CTM) training course and pilots who did not. CTM is the process by which pilots selectively attend to high priority tasks and shed non-priority tasks. Twenty seven pilots enrolled in a university flight technology program were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control group. Pilots flew pretest and posttest simulated flights on an FAA approved flight training device (FTD). Twenty potential task prioritization errors were embedded at 14 locations within the flight scenarios. Pretest CTM performance of the two groups was comparable. During a two week period between pretest and posttest simulated flights pilots in the experimental group participated in a CTM training course designed and taught by an FAA certified flight instructor and pilots in the control group did not. A Mann-Whitney U test rejected the null hypothesis that there was no difference in posttest CTM errors between the groups, indicating a positive training effect for experimental group pilots. Longer term training effects were not evaluated. Different cognitive processing models described various pilot behaviors; some behaviors were described by single channel theory, some by single resource theory, and others by multiple resource theory. Mispriotization due to the interruption of an aviate task by a communicate task occurred more frequently than interruption of a navigate task by a communicate task. Fixation on the GPS navigational system caused more than half the pilots to deviate from primary aviate tasks to attend to the secondary navigate task. Additional research with different participants is recommended. A study comparing training results between pilots who have different training backgrounds is also recommended. A longer time period between pretest and posttest and/or a longitudinal study is recommended to test for longer term training effects. Qualitative studies could also be used to enhance experiments, such as gathering responses from participants to discern the extent of their learning. Further studies using cockpits with higher levels of automation and complexity, such as new generation flat panel or 3D cockpit displays is recommended. / Graduation date: 2005

Thesis (Ph.D.)--RAND Graduate School, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2009. / A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Psychology, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographies.

This study proposed to develop a list of aviation books that experienced pilots consider inspirational and motivational which could be used in an aviation literature course in adult education. Survey results showed the subject pilots had a positive attitude toward reading and flying, but there was little correlation (r = .35) between the two. This suggests that something else influenced the reading of the sample books. The pilot resondents suggested 269 books for use in a course. This book list will need additional refining and syntopical sorting before use as a canon in an aviation education course.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1957 C65 / Master of Science

Decision making is fundamental to all aspects of flying operations. The results that flow from poor aeronautical decision making can be both swift and devastating. The work of this thesis uses data from a variety of sources to investigate the following aspects of aeronautical decision making; accident and incident case histories and pilot decision making, case-based versus rule-based pilot decision training, pilot behaviours in the face of adverse weather. The first part of thesis uses survey data to gain a better understanding of the role of accident and incident case histories in aviation safety and training. Anecdotal evidence suggests that exposure to case-based information can leave a lasting impression on a pilot and significantly influence their flying behaviour. To investigate this aspect more formally, information was obtained from a survey of 138 pilots. A questionnaire was then distributed to pilots worldwide and responses were received from 409 pilots, from all areas of aviation. The combined experience of pilots who responded was over 700,000 hours flying time. The second part of the thesis uses experimental data to compare the effectiveness of aviation safety training using case-based material or rule-based material. Two experiments were carried out, based on the two areas that account for the majority of fatal general aviation accidents: flight into adverse weather and low flying. A total of 114 participants took part in the experimental studies. The third part of the thesis is based on a set of 491 aviation accident and incident reports drawn from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau occurrence database. The study compares three groups of pilots who differed in their response to adverse weather conditions, as demonstrated by the following behaviours; VFR flight into IMC, a weather-related precautionary landing, some other significant weather avoidance action. A number of common themes emerged from the three parts of the thesis. There is strong support for the importance of case-based material in aviation safety and training. However, the results also suggest that aeronautical decision making can be best understood in terms of a model that combines both case-based and rule-based reasoning. Rule-based material provides a basic framework of standard procedures and recommended practices, particularly for novices, while case-based material adds detail and salience to the framework, particularly in the form of affective markers linked to particular case histories. One important aspect of the results can be summed up by the adage that 'a safe pilot is a proactive pilot'. That is, it is imperative for a pilot to take control of the situation before the situation takes control of them. The results also emphasise the dynamic nature of aeronautical decision making. A pilot may make a series of good decisions, but that is no automatic protection against a subsequent poor decision putting the safety of the flight at risk. Hence, it is critical that a pilot does not fly to the limit of their abilities, or let past success breed complacency.