Safety index (W3C 01/10)

Airmanship and safety tour

Rev. 8 — page content was last changed 20 August 2007

We strongly recommend that recreational flyers familiarise themselves with the sections of the Flight Theory, Aviation Meteorology, VHF Radiocommunications, Flight Planning, Navigation and Coping with Emergencies tutorials featured within this web service that focus on airmanship and safety matters.

Airmanship

Good airmanship is that indefinable something that separates the superior airman/airwoman from the average: it is not a measure of skill or technique, rather it is a measure of a person's awareness of the aircraft and its environment and of her/his own capabilities and behavioural characteristics, combined with wise decision making and a high sense of self-discipline.

Airmanship is the cornerstone of pilot competency. Competency has been defined as the combination of knowledge, skills and attitude required to perform a task well – or to operate an aircraft safely and in all foreseeable situations. A flight operation, even in the most basic low-momentum ultralight, is a complex interaction of pilot, machine, practical physics, airspace structures, traffic, weather, planning and risk; and when each and every flight is undertaken it is not only the aircraft which should be airworthy, the total environment — airframe, engine, pilot, atmospheric conditions and flight planning — should allow for the safe, successful conclusion of each flight. It is the perception – founded on the acquired underpinning knowledge – of the state of that total environment and its potential risks that provides the basis for good airmanship and safe, efficient flight. Poor perception and poor discipline create an incident-prone pilot.

The prime purpose of these tutorials is to provide knowledge to those who are willing to absorb it. The more you know about the physics of flight, the flight environment, your aircraft structure and its systems, flight planning and flight operations etc the more aware you will be of your own limitations — and the safer you and your passengers will be.

The following sections within the tutorials are particularly pertinent to safety. The sections are generally highlighted with the same background tone used in this table. An in-text link — at the end of each section — will lead you to the next section within the sequence.