ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the early views of the pilot as gambler, daredevil, ace, and romantic. It discusses a variety of metaphors that have guided the scientific analysis of human performance in aviation with a particular emphasis on the pilot as aeronautical decision maker. The view that the key to the quality of decision making lies in the process used by the decision maker is the basic assumption of the classic approach to decision making. A number of new approaches to decision making have emerged in response to evidence that the normative decision models fail to provide an adequate descriptive framework for predicting decision behavior. One of the most widely known approaches to pilot decision making, particularly in the field of general aviation, has involved an analysis of the underlying attitudinal bases of decisions. The field of aeronautical decision making is likely to become increasingly central to future research on human performance in the technologically driven field of aviation.
