Personal SA Story Peers Review 2
Provide a classmate review on their discussion topic :
n this module, you have learned the meaning of Situational Awareness and common threats to maintaining good SA. Additionally, you should now understand how to recognize diminished SA and actions to take to improve it. In this Discussion, evaluate a situation in which you experienced diminished or loss of SA. It does not have to aviation-related, though that would be preferred. Describe the event using a typical aviation debriefing method of \”What, Why, and How\” – what happened, why did it happen, and how could or should it have been avoided or remedied?
What happened – Be specific and include details of when and where the event occurred (flying, work, home, driving, out on the town, etc.), as well as who else was involved.
Why it happened – What caused the loss of SA? Were there any indicators (red flags) that it was occurring? Were those indicators recognized, and if not, why not?
How could the situation have been avoided? – Evaluate what you could have done differently to avoid the situation or what you will do in the future, i.e., formulate a suggested \”fix\” for such situations.
Classmate post that you need to post comment/ review on :
Six years ago, I was among 16 helicopter pilots assigned to do a flight formation airshow in the Makkah area to show and impose security dominance during Hajj season. Hajj season usually receives 3 million visitors worldwide, and some offensive activities during that season require a lot of law enforcement to succeed the mission.
We spent one week rehearsing for the airshow, and we usually sat an IIMC plan (Inadvertent Instrument Meteorological Conditions). If we caught by weather, each aircraft assigned to a different heading and altitude to avoided mid-air collision with other aircraft in that mission. All pilots were task saturated during tight close formation and so busy monitoring the intensive radio calls. One day, it supposed to be the last entry for the formation, but the airshow controller on the ground asked us to reformate to re-enter the airshow one more time. Being so fixating on the perfection of the formation entry, we totally ignored monitoring the onboard weather radar since the lead aircraft is the only one allowed to turn on the weather radar. When we were asked to leave the area, huge clouds developed in the last 30 minutes followed by unpredicted microbursts. It created a tremendous amount of dust front that turn everything into brown in a matter of minutes with a tailwind of 45 knots.
We caught by the dust wall, and we executed the IIMC plan. Yes, we stayed in this IFR condition for at least 30 minutes to reach our base since we cannot see the ground to land or have any airport nearby to land. The Autopiloted was saturated and disconnected regularly due to the high turbulent tailwind. So, we fought the flight controls and trusted the flight instrument, and monitored TCAS to avoid approaching any company helicopters all the time.
After landing, all pilots were stressed out from what happened and played the blaming game on the formation commander or to the ground controller, or us. I think many deficiencies occurred in that day. Pilots, Formation commander, flight operations, and the ground commander are all should work as a team and be responsible for the safety of that mission. We all were focusing on the formation phase, and we forgot our surrounding environment. Everyone in the team should think ahead of the aircraft, and our plans should be based on projections.