Can a flight instructor teach judgment?
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There is an old aviation saying: “Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment”. And another well known quote that is found in numerous FAA manuals goes like this: “A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid those situations which require the use of superior skill”. But how do we get that “Good or superior judgment”? The FAA does not tell us flight instructors how to teach judgment. However FAA manuals do define pilot judgment as the mental process by which the pilot recognizes, analyzes, and evaluates information regarding himself/herself, the aircraft, and the external environment. And they go on to say that good pilot judgment can be developed as part of a flight-crew training program. But the FAA does not mention anything on how to teach judgment, more so good judgment. The FAA does say that the best way to learn good judgment is through flying.
A quote from FAA-P- 8740, Pilot Prerogatives: “You don’t have to fly every day to be good – to be sharp – but you do have to fly and to practice often. Practice makes better pilots. What is needed, then, is to gain exposure to flying in small, digestible chunks, and to effectively evaluate this experience. This is how judgment is developed.” As an instructor it is easier to fine tune a student’s flying skills than to teach them good judgment.
Words like sound, good, critical, poor, best, professional are often used to describe what kind of judgment a pilot has or should have. The FAA explains (in very good detail) what can impair our judgment or what can have an adverse effect on our judgment. Designated Pilot Examiners use judgment when conducting a check ride. We as pilots are even taught that good judgment is so critical to flying safely.
So how do we teach good judgment? When examining this question in the various FAA manuals we find that the FAA does give some clues on teaching good judgment. Judgment goes hand-in-hand with decision making and experience is also used when discussing judgment. So perhaps the key the teaching judgment (good judgment) is to give your students the necessary tools and skills so that they demonstrate “good” decision making skills, and through their good decision making skills they will gain experience at their own comfort level.
Pilots can relate to real life stories or experiences from other pilots. There is nothing better than to learn from others mistakes. So when teaching judgment I find that it is best to give real life examples or scenarios. Share with your students your experiences. A good discussion to assist in teaching judgment is a talk about early fuel stops and weather delays. Years ago I was told a story about an airline captain on a flight from the west coast to New York. As the flight neared the Ohio area the talk on the frequency was about a line of storms and that there would be a delay of about an hour getting into New York. ATC was giving holding instructions to pilots and most said that they had enough fuel to hold for over an hour so hold they would. This particular captain had “be there, done that” and he decided to land short of New York and take on fuel. After landing and refueling he arrived up at altitude only to hear on the frequency that the other flights that decided to hold were getting low on fuel and had to land ASAP for fuel. Our captain displayed good judgment, he evaluated the weather and the amount of traffic on the frequency and with all of that information he knew it was best to land early and get fuel. As it turns out his flight was one of the first into KJFK (the delay ended up being more than 2 hours). Perhaps his good judgment was because of his experience. So back to our question of teaching judgment, we can give our students tools to assist them in their decision making process and thus they will be gaining experience. And it is their experience that will give them good judgment. We as flight instructors may not teach judgment directly however we teach decision making and it is through decision making and experience that pilots learn judgment (good judgment).
