COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED INCIDENTS IN GENERAL AVIATION DUAL FLIGHT TRAINING
By Kamil Etem and Marcia Patten1
Aerobase Research, Inc.
The Aviation Safety Reporting System, at NASA Ames Research Center

BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION
A recent survey of the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) database on incidents involving General Aviation (GA) aircraft revealed that one third of the GA incidents were associated with communications difficulties. These problems included failure to comply with ATC clearances, communications equipment malfunctions, and poor radio technique. The results of this survey suggested to our research team that GA communications issues were an appropriate topic for further ASRS research. We were also aware that past ASRS research has not focused on this subject.2
The 1996 Nall Report, published by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) Air Safety Foundation, further focused our attention on dual instruction.3 Although flight instruction, overall, was one of the safest operations in General Aviation, according to 1995 accident statistics, there was a notable concentration of fatalities and accidents during dual instruction: The only fatal go-around accident, four of the five fatal maneuvering accidents, and five out of seven non-fatal maneuvering accidents occurred during dual instruction.4 This cluster of accidents and fatalities in dual flight instruction raised the question of whether problematic communications, both inside and outside the aircraft, might have played a role.
A final motivation for this study was research by NASA and others which has shown that in shared decision-making situations similar to those that occur in GA dual flight instruction, there is often a failure of individuals to take responsibility for actions, including communications. At the 1995 OSU Symposium, Prince and Stout presented the results of interviews with professional aviators from the military, air carriers, and GA. They reported that 30 percent of the GA instructors surveyed stated that they trained students to perform independently, as single pilots, and believed their task as flight instructor was to encourage independence, not team awareness.5 An exaggerated emphasis on pilot independence during training arguably may exclude development of sound cross-cockpit communications procedures, and impair communications awareness and effectiveness.
1
  Kamil Etem is a general aviation flight/ground instrument instructor with a commercial pilot certificate and more than 1,500
hours of instructing experience in a variety of GA single-engine aircraft. He is also President and General Manager of
Aerobase Research, Inc.  Marcia Patten is a helicopter flight instructor and commercial pilot with more than 2,000 flight hours,
and serves as Associate Editor of the ASRS CALLBACK publication.
2
  ASRS research on General Aviation issues largely has been confined to weather-related topics, such as single-pilot IFR; pilot judgment issues; and flight phase-specific problems such as landing incidents.
　
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