A Holistic View of Cockpit Performance: An Analysis of the Assessment Discourse of Flight Examiners

Abstract

What pilots do on the job frequently is analyzed in terms of individual skills and human factors. Performances often do not consist of separable skills but of a holistic event, which can be analyzed into irreducible, mutually constitutive moments. A discursive psychology approach was used to analyze the discourse of flight examiners, based on 7 extended interviews about performance aspects. This study shows that in the discourse of flight examiners, cockpit performance is presented holistically, even though it manifests itself in different ways. Six main discourse repertoires are identified in examiners’ discourse about flight deck performance, each of which has between 3 and 5 identifiable subdimensions. Case studies show the connectedness and interdetermination of the 6 main repertoires for talking about what pilots do and how they do it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank Associate Professor Gloria Dall’Alba for her valuable guidance with some of the initial interviews and Dr. Andrea Kittila for her assistance in the proofreading of this paper.