9.2 Decision-Making, Attitudes & Situational Awareness

9.2 Decision-Making, Attitudes & Situational Awareness

Quick Answer: Good Advanced operations depend on decision-making, situational awareness (SA), and risk management under stress. Avoid the five hazardous attitudes (anti-authority, impulsivity, invulnerability, macho, resignation). Watch for channelized attention on tablet maps and automation complacency. When risk exceeds mitigations, no-go is a professional decision—not a personal failure.

Physiology (Section 9.1) asks whether your body and brain can perform. This section asks how you think under operational pressure. Transport Canada’s knowledge requirements emphasize human factors because many “drone crashes” are really decision failures: launching into marginal wind, ignoring a NOTAM, continuing with a weak link, or dismissing a visual observer’s traffic call.

Factors influencing decision-making

Decisions are not pure logic problems. They are shaped by:

Professional decision-making deliberately slows the loop when stakes rise: identify the decision, list options, check rules and SOPs, pick the option that preserves safety margins, then review after landing.

Decision errors common on Advanced jobs

1. Plan continuation bias — sticking with the original plan after conditions change (wind up, people arrive, authorization delayed).
2. Confirmation bias — noticing only cues that support launching (“ceiling looks okay from the parking lot”).
3. Normalization of deviance — small rule bends that become routine (“we always edge inside 30 m for this client”).
4. Authority gradient — junior VO afraid to challenge a senior pilot’s unsafe call.

Countermeasures: written go/no-go criteria, checklists (901.23 themes in Section 9.3), and a culture where any crew member can call stop.

Situational awareness levels

Situational awareness is knowing what is going on well enough to make safe decisions. Training materials commonly describe three levels:

Loss of SA often starts at Level 1 (you never saw the helicopter) or Level 2 (you saw it but thought it was farther/irrelevant). Automation can help Level 1 (ads-b receivers, obstacle sensors) but can hurt Level 2–3 if you stop understanding what the system is doing.

SA picture for an Advanced crew

Maintain concurrent awareness of:

• Aircraft state — position, altitude, attitude, mode (GPS/ATTI), battery, faults
• Link state — control and video quality, interference sources
• Airspace / traffic — crewed aircraft, other RPAS, restrictions, authorization limits
• People and property — horizontal distances, access control, public curiosity
• Weather trend — gusts, visibility, precipitation, density altitude effects
• Crew state — VO scan sectors, radio discipline, fatigue

When any element drops out, rebuild SA before expanding the mission envelope.

Stress, workload, and attention

Stress

Stress is the body’s response to demand. Moderate stress can improve alertness; overload narrows attention, increases errors, and promotes hazardous attitudes (“just get it done”). Sources include weather uncertainty, ATC frequency congestion, equipment faults, audience of bystanders, and personal life events (cross-link to IMSAFE Stress and Emotion).

Workload management

Workload is the relationship between task demand and available resources. Multirotor hovering in a quiet field is low workload; EVLOS mapping near a busy aerodrome with payload changes and radio calls is high workload.

Techniques:

• Shed non-essential tasks (fancy camera moves) when traffic or link becomes critical.
• Sequence work — do not reconfigure payload while talking to ATC and changing batteries.
• Use SOPs and checklists so working memory is free for monitoring.
• Assign roles so the pilot is not also the sole public-relations officer and payload editor.

Channelized attention / fixation on the tablet map

A signature RPAS human-factors failure is channelized attention: the pilot locks eyes on the GCS map, camera feed, or telemetry strip and stops scanning the real sky and site. The map feels authoritative; the aircraft symbol moves smoothly; minutes pass without a true VLOS check.

Consequences:

• Missed crewed traffic
• Unnoticed people entering the safety area
• Aircraft flown into obstacles “visible” only outside the camera FOV
• Delayed recognition of orientation illusions

Antidotes: timed scan cycles (map → sky → site → instruments), VO ownership of traffic, audio alerts that are not ignored, and mission designs that do not require continuous map staring for basic control.

Automation complacency

Modern RPAS offer GNSS hold, obstacle avoidance, return-to-home, geofencing, and automated missions. Automation complacency is over-trust: assuming the system will always save you, so monitoring declines.

Reality checks:

• Obstacle sensors have blind sectors and fail in rain, glass, thin wires, and certain lighting.
• RTH can climb or route in ways that violate airspace or people-distance assumptions if poorly configured.
• Autopilot missions still require human responsibility for see-and-avoid and rule compliance.
• “It has never failed before” is not a risk assessment.

Stay in the loop: know modes, confirm home point and RTH altitude before launch, and be ready to take manual control.

Risk management

A practical RPAS risk loop:

1. Identify hazards — traffic, people, weather, link, batteries, fatigue, airspace.
2. Assess risk — severity × likelihood in this specific scenario.
3. Mitigate — change time, site, altitude, crew, equipment, or procedures.
4. Decide — go, no-go, or go with limits (shorter sortie, higher minima).
5. Monitor and review — conditions change; land if mitigations fail.

Document key decisions in professional operations (briefing notes, flight logs). On the exam, prefer answers that reduce exposure over answers that rely on hope or heroics.

Five hazardous attitudes (with RPAS examples)

Aviation training highlights five hazardous attitudes. Learn each attitude, a drone example, and an antidote thought:

These attitudes are detectable in self-talk. If you hear yourself in one column, deliberately switch to the antidote before the sticks move.

Mini-scenarios for study

• Anti-authority: Ignoring a visual observer’s concern about entering controlled airspace without authorization.
• Impulsivity: Swapping a swollen battery “real quick” and arming without a full pre-flight.
• Invulnerability: Night flight with inadequate lighting discipline because “rural = empty sky.”
• Macho: Hand-catching a heavy enterprise airframe to look skilled.
• Resignation: Accepting an unsafe client demand after one protest, then disengaging mentally.

Tying psychology to Advanced privileges

Advanced operations raise both capability and consequence: controlled airspace, near/over people, medium aircraft, EVLOS. That means:

• SA must be wider (ATC, more public exposure, larger energy).
• Hazardous attitudes cause larger outcomes.
• Automation is stronger, so complacency risk rises.
• Employer pressure can be stronger on paid Advanced contracts—CRM and personal fitness still win (Section 9.3).

Common exam traps for Section 9.2

• Confusing SA perception with true comprehension/projection
• Treating automation as a substitute for monitoring and VLOS duties
• Missing the correct hazardous-attitude label for a scenario
• Choosing “continue and hope” over structured risk mitigation
• Believing experience eliminates the need for scan discipline

If you can name the SA level you lost, the attitude you are sliding into, and the risk control you will apply next, you are thinking like an Advanced professional—not like a tourist with a high-end drone.