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Slippery runways were a contributing factor in 24 critical situations, although invariably this condition was associated with pilots overshooting or landing with excessive speed or with runways being too short. Interference by non-commercial aircraft was reported as a contributing factor in 25 critical situations. Likewise, it was the opinion of 36 pilots that this was an important cause of unsafe airline flying.

In general, the analysis of these critical situations revealed on consistent fact -- namely, that unsafe airline flying is a product of a constellation of factors. The total configuration produced by several unsafe conditions, operating at one time or in sequence, is the important ingredient for a critical situation. Removal of any one of the unsafe conditions is likely to change the complexion of the situation from critical to commonplace and ordinary.

5. Pilot Fatigue. The findings of this survey in regard to the causes and effects of pilot fatigue are far from extensive. There is evidence, however, that pilot fatigue may effect pilot behavior in almost all of the components of his job and in almost all phases and conditions of flight. The frequency of the kinds of pilot errors resulting from feelings of fatigue seems to correspond with the frequency of errors resulting from other factors, as shown in Table 2. The small number of critical situations reported by pilots are resulting from fatigue seems to indicate the necessity for a separate investigation of this factor, using larger samples of pilots. It appears from the data obtained that an important factor in fatigue situations is the number of consecutive hours flown by the pilot prior to the incident, the average obtained being 8.65 hours.

Conclusions

In the summary of the findings of this survey, it was suggested that the information pertaining to the critical requirements of the airline pilot's job might be a foundation upon which to develop improved selection, more appropriate training and more objective evaluation of airline pilots. The knowledge of what are the critical requirements of the job is of great potential value, but these requirements must be translated into a coordinated attack upon selection, training and evaluation. Improvements in these three areas are necessarily dependent upon knowing the critical requirements of the job. To the presently available pilot selection tests developed during the war can be added some new tests designed to measure some of the requirements distinctive for the airline pilot's job. To present methods of training can be added new methods which will increase proficiency in the most critical components of the job. Both new selection tests and new training methods, however, need validation. That is, there must be some objective and reliable measure of the proficiency of a pilot in order to test adequately the effectiveness of new selection and training methods. In order to say with confidence that a new selection test will predict which pilots will become more proficient and that some new training procedure will increase pilot proficiency, there should exists an adequate measure of proficiency.

The present survey has indicated that present measures of proficiency are hardly objective and sensitive enough to be used as a suitable criterion against which to validate new selection and training procedures. It is proposed, therefore, that the first step of a program which utilizes the results