When Pressure to Fly Is Personal

Rotor Safety Challenge (RSC)
Tracks: Safety; Operations; Maintenance
Instructor: Ken Cerney

For years, flight instructors have been talking about and training new pilots to recognize hazardous attitudes. These dangerous decision-making attitudes not only affect safe professional pilots but also non-pilot crew members trained in good crew resource management/air medical resource management (CRM/AMRM) techniques. This session will look at how personality conflicts, hazardous attitudes, and the stress effect can easily lead to the need to just get along and not speak up at crucial moments, leading to self-induced pressure to fly or continue. It will also explain the antidote to these hazardous attitudes and when/how team members (air and ground) should intervene, so we can all come home safely.

Instructor Bio

Ken Cerney is a retired US Army aviator now flying as an emergency medical services (EMS) pilot in single-pilot VFR and dual-pilot IFR programs. Besides being a helicopter pilot for more than 20 years in the US Army and the past 15 years in helicopter air ambulance (HAA), his background is in leadership and communications. He regularly engages with while looking at helicopter/HAA accident reports for clues into the human factors side of helicopter accidents.