Critical Thinking to improve Flight Test Safety and Ways to Implement

Ben Luther, Test & Evaluation Safety Manager, Aviation Safety Office, Gulfstream, Savannah,
Georgia, US

Abstract

Critical thinking is valuable to Flight Test because it promotes broad consideration of the task in order to capture the full extent of the issues faced. It also promotes the skills to analyze the elements of the issue once they are identified, in a clear and rational manner, without the negative impact of bias. Decisions made upon analyses based in critical thinking are more likely to be balanced, based upon objective evidence, risk assessed, and represent the best available information. Consequently, they are less likely to be erroneous and costly; they are more likely to represent a safe course of action, a better business proposal, or an accurate engineering judgment. When critical thinking is applied to Flight Test products such as test plans and reports, these complex documents should be: clear, orderly, have adequate breadth to address the issues, focused on key factors, precise, concise, logical and relevant.

Adequate time is a necessary element to enable critical thinking. Since the human reaction to time constraints is adverse to the conduct of critical thinking, Flight Test teams need to consider implementing processes that provide enough time to detect the errors and implement a change.

The attributes of a checklist (sharp, sequenced, memory prompts) can be useful for implementing the principles of critical thinking, to push practitioners to address areas that may otherwise be erroneously assumed to be irrelevant or omitted. This paper proposes that checklists are very complementary to the critical thinking process and should be implemented by Flight Test practitioners and managers in their Flight Test process to speed conduct and assure the quality of their work. Use of a checklist in these scenarios avoids errors of omission and speeds the practitioner through the routine elements to enable them to concentrateon the high value, creative elements. Checklists offer a way of assuring the attributes of critical thinking feature in the conduct of Flight Test activity. Examples of checklists applied to Flight Test process are included as appendices.

Checklists offer a Flight Test organization a tool to assure the implementation of critical thinking to the Flight Test process. Critical thinking assures the quality of Flight Test output, improving efficiency and safety.