Psychological skills of elite military pilots

Fifteen highly-rated pilots were interviewed at a Royal Canadian Air Force base by university psychology researchers as part of a larger longer project on how master performers differ from those of us that are merely ‘good’. Some of the results were published in 2014 — Examining the Psychological Skills Used by Elite Canadian Military Pilots — and it makes for interesting reading. “Your focus narrows and you’re not thinking about other stuff. I can have outside stresses at home and it won’t affect me … as soon as I get into the plane I don’t think about it anymore until I’m on the ground.” Participant … Continue reading Psychological skills of elite military pilots

Academic Airmanship Paper

This week I read an interesting research article on airmanship in standardized airline cockpits. The lead author is Torgeir Haavik, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology with an engineering background in oil drilling, who more recently earned a PhD in the sociology of risk and safety. The paper is wildly — for an academic journal — titled: ‘Johnny was here: From airmanship to airlineship’. It was published by Applied Ergonomics journal in 2016. So: Who’s Johnny? What’s airlineship? And can pilots learn anything useful from the journal Applied Ergonomics? Read on, all will be revealed! “Airmanship belongs to a … Continue reading Academic Airmanship Paper

New research on meditating F-16 fighter pilots

New peer-reviewed scientific research suggests mindfulness mental training helps F-16 fighter pilots. It’s in the latest edition of the International Journal of Aviation Psychology, and describes a long-term (2-year) study using Norwegian F-16 pilots. These high-performance combat-rated pilots show a increase in self-perceived skills associated with mindfulness, attention regulation and arousal regulation following a regime of mindfulness training. Alone it’s not the greatest study, due to self-reporting qualitative measures and lack of a control group, but in talking to the lead author I’ve learned much more is coming. Anders Meland is a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Aviation Medicine and … Continue reading New research on meditating F-16 fighter pilots