The Five Ps That Keep Pilots Out of Trouble

Claire Brooks

So Jimmy is cruising at three thousand feet, right, and he is staring dead-eyed at this flashing low fuel warning on the console while, while he is frantically trying to pair his iPad to the Garmin GPS, and Captain Bob literally yanks the throttle back and goes, so tell me, Jimmy, do you plan on gliding us to the airport, or were you hoping to fly?

Oliver Hart

Ah, the, the classic glass cockpit trance. You have a pilot spending ten minutes fighting a Bluetooth menu while the actual airplane is running out of gas and drifting toward restricted airspace.

Claire Brooks

Exactly! And that exact disaster scenario is why the FAA Aviation Instructor's Handbook lays out what they call Single Pilot Resource Management, or SRM. And the core decision framework there is what they call the five Ps. Specifically, the FAA defines them as the Plan, the Plane, the Pilot, the Passengers, and the Programming.

Oliver Hart

The Plan, the Plane, the Pilot, the Passengers, and the Programming. Right, and the key with those five items is that they are not just a static checklist you run once on the ground before you take off and then put away, is it?

Claire Brooks

No, not at all! The handbook says you have to evaluate all five at five specific key decision points throughout the flight. That is preflight, pretakeoff, hourly or mid point, predescent, and right before pre pattern entry.

Oliver Hart

But what happens in reality, like with poor Jimmy up there, is that one P completely swallows all the others. Usually Programming.

Claire Brooks

Yes! Programming is the trap. You get these over-caffeinated student pilots who are hyper fixated on screen menus and flight bag apps, so they are staring at Programming while completely ignoring Plane, like active fuel consumption, or Pilot, like acute anxiety.

Oliver Hart

I mean, when Bob forces Jimmy to do an immediate five P check right there in the cockpit, what did he actually find?

Claire Brooks

Oh, it was terrible. Under Pilot, Jimmy's heart rate was literally one hundred and forty beats per minute because he had downed three energy drinks before takeoff. Under Plane, fuel was dangerously low. And under Plan, a crosswind had pushed them completely off course toward restricted airspace while he was tapping on his screen!

Oliver Hart

It really highlights the difference between static tools and actual dynamic decision making, doesn't it? A lot of pilots fill out a Flight Risk Assessment Tool, a FRAT, on paper before engine start, tick all the boxes, and think, right, I am safe for the day.

Claire Brooks

Right, but paper risk tools are totally useless if you do not continuously re evaluate hazards when unexpected things pop up mid flight. Like, look at Passengers and Plan. If your passengers are super talkative or pressuring you to land at a specific time, social pressure sets in.

Oliver Hart

Ah, get-there-itis. The refusal to modify an obsolete flight plan because you don't want to disappoint people in the back seats or acknowledge that conditions have changed.

Claire Brooks

Exactly. And Captain Bob actually shares this amazing story from his fifteen thousand hours on airline flight decks. He had a full automation failure once, screen went dark, and he realized button mashing the computer was not going to solve it. He literally abandoned the flight management computer, turned off the clutter, and went back to basic hand flying.

Oliver Hart

Basic pilotage always trumps mashing screen buttons. That is such a vital lesson when workload spikes.

Claire Brooks

It saved his aircraft then, and it saved Jimmy. Jimmy reaches over, shuts off the iPad screen completely, does a basic head up scan out the window, and boom, his stress drops almost immediately before entering the traffic pattern.

Oliver Hart

Turn off the distraction, fly the airplane first, then check your five Ps. Simple as that.