Survey of Aviator Perceptions of Aviation Emergency Procedure Training and Recall

摘要

The first step in the U.S. Army's current practice of teaching aviation emergency procedures is to require student pilots to learn the textual procedures through rote memorization. No standardized guidance or memorization techniques are provided as best practices. The U.S. Army is particularly demanding of their student and graduate pilots in that it requires the memorization of an extensive number of emergency procedures (many more than the other military services), each of which usually contains multiple purposefully- ordered steps. Experience shows that hours of study do not assure accuracy and timeliness of recall. The purpose of this written survey was (1) to identify (based on anonymous subjective opinion data) the attitudes, perceptions, and thoughts of aviators regarding their study habits and the Army's; 5 traditional method of teaching and testing aviation emergency procedures; (2) to assess the tolerability of aviators to changes to current training methods and to learning novel memorization techniques; and (3) to determine if further research into novel training methods is warranted. With a response rate of 97's 194 operational Army helicopter aviators at Fort Rucker, Alabama, provided anonymous opinion data. These personnel consisted of student pilots, instructor pilots and those attending helicopter instructor pilot courses. The results indicate that while most respondents are satisfied with their chosen memorization method(s), a large percentage (over 65%) would be interested in learning different/additional methods. The results suggest that learning and retaining aviation emergency procedures can be difficult for some pilots. Further research may provide Army pilots with better ways to learn and retain the required information.