ABSTRACT
An ability to make timely, appropriate and effective decisions is an essential competence required of all aircrew, yet until fairly recently decision making training remained (in some cases remains still) unstructured and haphazard. This paper examines how a major civil helicopter operator developed formal awareness training in decision making for aircrew as part of a crew resource management programme. Based on this experience, the aims of the paper are: • to suggest a framework for and justification of comprehensive awareness
training in expert decision making • to provide feedback to the research community on the practical application of
published results • to provide support for continued research and suggest areas for future
consideration. The paper opens with a review of the basic rationale for treating decision
making as an explicit and separate training topic, in contrast with the more traditional methods of decision making training for flight crews. The advent of crew resource management training in aviation necessitated the new approach and the initial training formulation is examined, along with the strengths and weaknesses discovered during delivery. Considered also are some of the problems encountered when converting published research results into practical training. Finally, conclusions and residual questions are presented for both future research and training.
