TEM stands for “Threat and Error Management.” It was developed in the commercial airline industry in the early 90’s as a result of a series of accidents that happened because of human error. TEM is a simple system that helps pilots identify threats so they don’t lead to errors which if they multiply could lead to an “undesirable aircraft state.” It’s simply an awareness protocol laid out through a series of checklists and procedures that become built-in threat mitigation. Threats in all forms of flight are ubiquitous- internal and external threats are everywhere. So how can we use this remarkably successful program in free flight to reduce risk? And how can we make safety a bigger part of our free-flight culture? The parallels with commercial flight and free flight are similar and if we as a flying community even have a basic understanding of TEM accidents in our sport would plummet. In this episode we talk about the four basic tools you can develop (avoidance, passive safety, defensive safety, active and reactive safety) to build your resilience to threats and risk; the chess analogy and the Art of War; how understanding TEM consciously will allow our subconscious to keep us safer; the critical phase of flight; the difference between TEM and risk management and a lot more things that you NEED to hear. Listen to this one! Fly safe!
To read all about TEM and get the distilled version go here.
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TEM- what is it, where it came from and how it helps pilots mitigate risk
The four tools of TEM
The chess analogy- offense and defense
“The chess we play is against mother nature”
“Many threats in our sport are invisible”
The critical phase of flight and the “sterile cockpit” procedure
Using TEM forensically- working the accident backwards
Using TEM on the fly
What’s the difference between TEM and Risk Management?
How can we use this system, and why we need to
Fear and TEM.
Safety audit
Rick Brezina’s Dust Devil and TEM
Mentioned in this episode:
Red Bull X-Alps, Foundation for Free Flight, Rick Brezina, Cross Country Magazine, Matt Beechinor, Nate Scales, Rob Sporrer, Mitch Riley, Chris Santacroce, The Art of War, Kelly Farina, USHPA, Brad Gunnuscio, Reavis Sutphin-Gray
Episode 90- Threat and Error Management (TEM) and Free Flight
00:00:21 - 00:05:02
Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the cloud base may him. It is just about exactly two months until gun goes off and Salzburg. So for the red bull x things are little bit crazy right now training and just life. It's been nuts. I was just out in California for a month back home. Now, the training has been credibly intense. Also at times fun, but mostly incredibly intense. So then about a month from now ahead nowhere to Europe with the family will have three or four weeks before the race to get it all sorted out. The over there with my team. And so, yeah, it's all happening. That is pretty exciting. I have just launched a way for people to contribute to that. Not to us personally, not due to myself or the other guys US team coding tank or Willie canal. But I thought, you know, kinda screwing around mine either night thinking about there's gotta be a way we could raise money for a good cause using. The X apps pretty cognizant that it's this massive undertaking. And it's, but it's also pretty selfish and. Must be a way people do these kind of things when they run a marathon, and they get people to pledge per mile, and that money goes to a really good. 'cause while the foundation for free flight is one of these great causes. It's all staffed by volunteers. They do a ton of work with protecting sites and supporting free flight in a lot of different ways. They're they're just they're terrific people trick organization they have supported us quite generously in past excerpts races. And also the world's team. But even if you're not obviously, a US-based pilot, which many many of you listen to the show or not they do really good work and it's important for the flying community. So we've got this pledge it campaign. That's the platform. If you go to the website cloud-based, mayhem dot com. You'll find it on the homepage where he complex just fine item out five bucks, ten bucks or something. But you can also pledged by the climate. It's not that'd be really fun way to make the race little that more engaging. So you know, like a penny accommodate kind of thing or something which would we'd just make the race fine. And in also throw some support to a really good cause foundation free flight so wanted to give them a shout out there. I have been super super busy not just with the X apps, but with the boat, you know, some, you know, I have this whole kite surfing expedition, called the Carina quest for many many years now used to be the captain of the boat. And now, I just run the back end, we're finishing up on a big long one you re fit in getting ready to go do another five years around the world. That's not meaning Moore's just the boat in the business members and all I can stop. So I've been really busy with that. I bring that up because I have been getting a ton of you allow I get a lot of emails and texts and stuff and messages from you the community recommending people to get on the show, really, really. I appreciate that. I just haven't had the bandwidth to. I'm sure I'm missing some people. And I'm not getting back is should I just apologized for that? But also if you do reach out with those if you could do it through the website, and send me an Email through the contact page because then it's at least in my inbox. I will find it. I will get back to you. I will log those people better and reach out to them because when stone Facebook, I just there's just disappears in the internet. It's gone. And I just I don't use Facebook enough on us the mess Jinping. Hardly at all. I know that's newsy way to do it. But there's just no way me to keep track of their because so many people message through that. So if you could if you do have someone you want here on the show, I take those very seriously will reach out to them. I will try to line them up, but do it through the website. If you could help me out a lot I've talked about in the last few shows that were switching over from patriot to our own subscription service. So. We will bear more of the cost of that. In more of your money. You donate and support show will make it to the show and not these other platforms and taxes and all that kind of stuff. So I think it's a good move. At turns out, it's been quite a bit more complicated and quite a bit more work than I anticipated. But we're almost there. It's actually live on the website. But it's, you know, not looking real great. We still need to kinda just clean it up. And do a lot more testing and make sure it works. It does work several people already done it. Appreciate that. But for now stick where you are through pay pal or patriot.
00:05:02 - 00:10:02
Or however, you supported us in the past, and we will get this up and going here very very shortly. We have been working on this weather show that's going to be multiple podcasts and be in a few different series. It's really aimed at helping people identify the day. So we're asking people about their weather flaw. So we're kind of going to experts in asking them how how they identify good days. And we're talking to people in different parts of the rule. So. Bending where you live where you're traveling to. We hope to kind of hit the Himalayas destroy in Zeeland and the states and the outs Nikkei, so. Proven to be a big task in the lot of editing. But I think you're gonna like it. We're just about ready with the first one. So that'll be out here. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks, but we're still looking for a few different people in different areas. So if you have if you know, somebody club or just know somebody using real wizard with weather and can explain it. Well. Can kind of talk layman's terms than send them our way. What it let us know? We'll try to get them trying to get him interviewed. Presentations? I'm booked for a couple of presentations in in your the summer when I'm going to be over there. So no between kind of may twentieth. And the end of August giving ex- outspread stations of doing this in various spots around the world cops this year seems to be well received a lot of fun. So I give talk this kind of multimedia thing on the twenty fifteen twenty seventeen races. I suppose after this race I'll be able to add that to be kind of fun. So if you have a club or warm and come and give a talk just reach out to me, I'll try to fit it in and might be hard before the race. But love to do it afterwards. Those those have been quite fun. And this show. So this one is with a friend of mine. Jake aid, nNcholas he is commercial airline pilots been flying paragliders for an awfully long time. But he admits the show that he's, you know, definitively a sport pilot and. Not not a huge sender. Djeddai Banney means, but he loves frying. And he's been a commercial airline pilot for a long time. He reached out in quite a long time ago about t- threaten era management and said, you know, hey, I think that, you know, this is something that really got developed big time in the airline industry in the nineties after a series of accidents. And they really looked at you know, human error the psychology of why people make mistakes. It wasn't wasn't gear. It wasn't the equipment that was using failing. It was just people making typically cascade on the stakes. Not always sometimes it just one critical one. But anyway, really looked into this. And they have in a lot of ways solved this problem. I mean, obviously, there are still accidents. But the accident rate went way down and there's a ton of crossovers here with with free flight. And so I found this pretty fascinating. And we talk about internal and external threats and how they can lead to errors. Don't always have to see new directly to an era without any threats. But that the kind of nuances of that whole thing, you know, the head space, you're in the food. You've had how you feel how company on a certain day kinda like internal threats extra dress other people in the air weird air. Anyway, I think this gives us something to kind of fall back on even if it's not something you really consciously us. It's good for us to know. So sub-conscious can maybe drift back to it in times of need. So please join us fireside talk with Jake Jacobinical. JK awesome. Daddy on show. I really appreciate you literally flying into town to do this. And I always call these fireside chats, but we're literally having a fireside chat so listeners you're gonna hear some crack on the fire here on a nice evening in Marshall and southern California. So. JK? We're gonna talk about T M, you're an airline pilot, and you're paraglider, obviously. And we're gonna talk about Rick Brasilia's crazy dust double flight that all of you listening. I'm sure have seen that went crazy viral down in Manila recently in the the article that came out of that in cross country and how that relates to TM threaten air management. So let's start there. What is it? And why are we gonna talk about it? Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on your show. Gavin like, I say, I'm not one of the best pilots in the world for from that. But the have a little something here that I hope I can pass along to to paraglider pilots in hanging pilots as well. Anybody in free flight, and I just wanna say again hats off to you Gavin for for doing this podcast. It's treasure trove of information, and it's doing a lot of really good things for community in hopefully.
00:10:03 - 00:15:01
Making people safer, and that's the whole peer little bit history. In ninety four some psychologists at the university of Texas psychologists were focused on human factors in in safety. They got their hands on some really detailed commercial safety investigations of accidents. And they walked into it knowing that pilot error is pretty much the cause of most accidents. They knew had be something more than just politics because pilots intentionally makers, and they want to uncover how and why it happened. And after looking at all of these investigations, they found out that for the most part there's things in our environment in our flying environment that contributes up and lead us down that road making errors, and they called those things threats and threats specifically not just any kind of threat now like a mugger in the park or an active shooter. We're talking about threats to the two flights. Fifty threats can be anything from whether to. You know, new Queant or dehydration or hypotheses any number different. Things could being being are flying impairment. So you threats are ubiquitous in essense, Dirk, they're everywhere. They are there. They're all the time. Sometimes we expect them. Sometimes we don't. But the biggest takeaway is that the threats. We are not aware of have their way with us and threats that we are aware of are expecting, and we have a plan for them. Those are the threats we manage effectively and thereby prevent the air from occurring. So it's it's kind of like a it's a chain not of errors causes accident. But it's chain of threats in Ayers, and you're much better off managing the threat. And not having the error, the managing your heirs and not having an accident. And that's how this kind of upside down pyramid. That's that. The the the symbol that you guys. Use on your on your flight. Card that you all wear when you're up in the cockpit flying these airplanes in. It's like you describe it as kind of an upside down ice cream cones. So in other words, it starts with threats. It leads to heirs. If you don't catch the air or errors, you you you end up with an unstable aircraft. That's right. And in the cone can be divided into in the third top third. Biggest one that's the threat or the threats. And then the middle is the heirs. And then the one at the bottom the one that happens the lease. But is the most the. Most consequential is the undesirable aircraft state. You're always trying to keep things at the top managed threats. I deal with that in everything works great. If you if you miss something, and you don't you're mismanaging threat than it may work its way down to an error. And then when that happens you need to recognize it and repair it. And if you do then you go back to managing threats again. Everything's good with your flight. But if you don't then it could it could progress down to undesirable aircraft state in that could be it could be a stall or spiral or just a simple vector into terrain, and that you need to correct. And if you don't you have an accident. So the the the neat thing about threaten management is that it's an effective tool for forensics. So you have an accident. And you're confused about how it happened or new and you want to uncover the. The reasons why it happened. And so you take the accident. And then you figure out what the desirable state was. And you found find out what errors led to that undesirable aircraft state. And unfortunately, in our sport a lot of times, we stop at the error. You know, the the air is almost obvious in some cases. And you say, okay. Well, this is what the guy did wrong. Don't do that. And everyone says, yeah, let's obvious. Don't do that. I'm not gonna stall at twenty feet off the ground. I'm not gonna do that. And then in time someone else does and they don't look beyond the air. Don't look at the threat that led the pilot to that air. And that's what we need to focus on when we fly we need to focus on the threats. And when we're aware of what they are, and we can manage effectively than we do see air tremendously. And so that's kind of that's the focus of this threaten your management. So JK the one of the things in your in your kinda ride up with t. Very common problem that the airline industry figured out ninety four with psychologists. They instituted TM was that they're they're typically isn't just like something that happens. And that's it. It's a chain of errors. It's a number of threats that don't get identified threats can lead to errors the Air's.
00:15:01 - 00:20:03
Don't get repaired a recognized. And then you end up in this unstable aircraft states on correct undesirable across aircrafts date, you ASO in paragliding speak. That's you know, the you you've spun you've stalled you've balled it up or you screw up launch. You screw up a landing. Those are also undesirable aircraft states. I always think about I think I've told this story on the podcast before. But I'll tell it again because it's a grey one. And this is definitely TM. Now that I know what it is. But I didn't back then, but. Math teacher Nate skills were flying some valley years ago. This is before oxygen was being used, and you know, things were little more cowboy and for whatever reason, you know, maybe it was a little less sleep than normal or an extra beer the night before the hike that morning physiologically, something was little different with Matt. And he takes off and he's not even that high. He's like thirteen thousand which in some valleys pretty low and calls far calls Nate to just check in on the radio and Nate answers back. Like, dude, you sound like an idiot. What's going on and in match Xs radio because he feels fine and he calls again Nate's like d sound like a four year old is wrong with you. And then right, then he starts losing his hands. And he loses elbow, and he loses all web is arms, and he's like holy cow super hypoxia. And so he kinda like does the Jesus Christ thing hands out through the toggles all the way up to the shoulder. So he can feel and you can. Piloted aircraft. And he goes on lands. So that means I understand it isn't that kind of pretty exact TM. So there were threats, you know, there's the physiological threats. There's the threat of flying a pair Kleiner high altitude. And but he recognizes it there's some heirs to he gets high pox EQ, you know, he doesn't have oxygen. And then he, but he recognizes it, and you repairs it, and we never get the undesirable aircraft state. So pretty classic TM. That's excellent job. And that's kinda how it works. Exactly. But if you would have been aware of high poxy of before he went, maybe he would have recognized some of the symptoms before they took a hold him. He could have been able to recognize it himself as in the air force for twenty five years and one of the requirements in the air force's every five years, you have to do what's called a Hypo barrack chamber flight, I'm sure you've heard of hyperbaric chamber, which is what they do. If you have the Ben's. And in in diving, and they pressurize it and put you back to a level where you're not you Jin can go back into in your blood. Anyway, Hypo Baruch is where they sucked the air out emit. They put you at altitudes, so you can experience pox ya. And the reason they do that is because the hypotheses symptoms are different for everyone. Some people react in a way that they get drowsy the their mind wonders, some people get punch junk happy, those are the fun ones. And. Anyway, the point is that everyone has a slightly different reaction to high pox yet. And they do this. So that you can recognize your own symptoms. Should they service? Like, you said once every five years is what you have to do there. So that helps with threat awareness, and rob spore just recently one of your shows you ask some what he would recommend to pilots to be more safe. And what he came up with one of the things he came up with fly with other people. And that's what Matt was doing. And the reason that's so important is because it it expands your threat awareness. Maybe you don't see something, but one of your flying by these does and he brings to the surface and mentions it, and that's what happened here in. That's a really positive way to get, you know, the threat awareness side of the house. The other thing to think about is is when we have threats, especially if we have these internal. Performance decreasing threats like dehydration fatigue. Hypoxia they can combine. And although you might be able to deal with deal with fatigue Wedneday, if you're fatigued Andy hydrated than that might take you to an even lower level. And now you can't perform you can't do what you have to do to to remain safe. How do they teach? How did they teach you guys to identify threats? You talk about you know, when you're before you the I found this fascinating that you make way more errors is airline pilots than free flight. File it's because there are so many errors to make. There's just pages and pages and pages of checklists with every flight. So you just you know, it's inevitable that you're gonna miss one or two. And you know, it's the reason airplanes aren't falling out of the skies.
00:20:03 - 00:25:04
There so much redundancy in there so many checklist to cover the other checklist. But how do you how do you? Learn to get better at identifying threats. Let me just start by saying that a lot of these checklists and procedures in and call outs that we have in. The airlines are built in threatened Gatien in order to manage your threats. Effectively you have to you have to have you have to have defensive in in some cases defensive measures in place to prevent these threats from causing causing problems. We have a lot of that stuff built into our procedures. So with all those procedures that we have we have greater likelihood of creative causing air when we fly because we have so many more things to do. And and it's not just with the procedures that we do. But also the communications with traffic control, and a number of other things that we have going on a lot of those a lot of those mistakes are inconsequential. But there's still mistakes. You're still errors in paragliding. We don't have nearly as many we don't have any procedures for the most part. We don't really have any airspace to deal with other than to avoid it. Certain cases, what checkless we have. And the ones we we make ourselves be a prior to launching that kind of thing. So there aren't as many to make. But when a paraglider does make an air than they're usually not inconsequential you they're usually an error. That's gotta be Dulles and corrected. And so that's that's that's the reason why you're only makes him anymore airs, and it's okay to make yours. There's no such things. Perfect flight every pilot every airline pilot realizes that these strive to be perfect in flight. But they know they're not going to be important things recognize the that you making in you know, you correct them before they cause a problem down the road. Do they teach you any kind of specific skills to recognize that, you know, a potential chain of errors or even just recognize the more than the normal threats. Are you are all pilots in your industry? Kind of clipped. Would you say clipped better than free flight pilot? Are in general to recognize a wait a minute. Okay. There's the there's the this in this, and this I got a break this chain. Yeah. I think that the safety culture place. You different definition of culture is just something that everyone is cooled into everyone knows you're talking about when you talk about something that's part of your culture. And so in your lines, they make threaten management part of our culture, and every every airline pilot is pretty well versed on what a threat is. And what to do with one? When it surfaces also aware that they lead to errors. And then stand how that process works in the best way to stop that process from taking its course to an accident is to disrupt it, and so I think in in those terms were better equipped than a free flight pilot. But I I think that that something that we can change. And I think that if we fight pile. Understand how that process works. They're gonna have some tools to work with to prevent the the threats from taking taking charge in in turning things into errors in running down into undesirable or craft state. What are the tools, well, the number one thing is is to take care of the threats because if you do that on the threats won't lead to heirs? So the focus is on your threat, and it's a very deliberate system that you can you can use their basically for things that you can do to mitigate your threat a threaten integration tool kit. The first thing you can do is avoid it. If you can just don't let it get in your way, if you if you know, there's truculent somewhere go around it. If it's a if it's a bad data fly don't fly that day. And I know sometimes it's it's hard to to do that. 'cause it. Looks like it might be. Okay. And then you commit to flying. And now you're in the air. So then you have to step into the next thing that you could do and the next thing is passive safety. And that's something you have to think about before you fly usually that's protective clothing, helmet gloves, boots good ankle protection things like that are passive safety. But also the wing that you choose, you know, that's a big one. You find a triple C R A B because there's a whole lot of built in passive safety in the b wing, and that might be going to fly on on the day you choose to fly. And then the other two things that you have in your kit are a defensive safety, and by definition defensive safety is something is some action that you need to take prior to encountering the threat in preparation for it whether it happens or not in my prior.
00:25:04 - 00:30:02
You mean training you mean SIV are you mean immediately prior? No, I'm talking about immediately. Prior like, a for instance, when you're launching you could there's a possibility that you could have turbulence after you launch you could fly into thermal, you could have a frontal, and so you do to appeal to launch because puts you in the right body position. Not only to keep your wing open. But also puts your body in a good peel position. In case, you, you know, you you end up coming down to the ground. You're not gonna come down on your back. You're gonna come down on your feet. That's I think that's why we do a torpedo launch. I think Mitch Riley mentioned in in his podcast not long ago. He thinks it pilots should have torpedo physician when they land and for the same reasons. Defensive you. It is and it's because of appeal f all you've got left you. You're not going to be able to throw your reserve. If you suddenly come down hard on landing. It's not as it's not a an option anymore. All you've got as appeal F, and you can't decide just before you do appeal after put yourself in appeal of position, it doesn't work if you're sitting back in your harness, and you're twenty feet off the ground, and you suddenly get dropped you're gonna get dropped on your back. And and so being an appeal position before you, you you need it is the only way you're gonna have it, and that's defensive that's defensive threatened Gatien. And there are lots of other examples of for instance, if you're if you're scratching on a on a steep on Clifford steep ridge in thermic site in Hawaii was pretty lamb NAR coming in off the ocean. But if you're at the point of the mountain, for instance, there's a good chance of thermal could come through your. And if and if it does, and you take a claps on the mountainside or the on the hillside wing, it's the wings can attorney toward the hill. And you need any to weight shift away from the hill. So my first my first structure was Santa at the point. I worked with him for my first week training. And and he said, you know, if if you know that going toward the mountain is bad, and you wanna go away from the mountain when when you're scratching or when you're close to a ridge, you should have a little bit of weight shift away from the hill at all times as defensive safety. So that if you do take claps, then you're already begin you've already begun, your weight shift, and you just have to increase it to something that you know, that you need in order to fly straight or flyway from the hill that sets an example defensive safety. And the finally the fourth thing that you have in your tool kit is active in reactive, safety and. A lot of times. That's what we rely on. Especially with tributes and taking collapses we have to react to that collapse. The thing that you have to keep in mind is if you have if you have a lot of weight on your active reactive safety as far as your took. It goes then you better not have too many threats that lower the bar on your Billy to perform. So in other words, and and I'm looking at you square the eye right now Gavin, and I'm wondering how you're gonna pull this off. But when you go to exile, you're gonna have a lot of active reactive safety, you're going after rely on especially if you fly in some ratty Lee side stuff, and that could be after being up for, you know, fourteen hours and on your on your six day of five hours of sleep dehydrated. Maybe and, you know, your bar's going to be lowered on your ability to perform, and maybe that'll be offset with your gentle, and I don't. No. But. Anyway, whenever you whenever you're thinking about your threat mitigation, you've gotta take into account all your threats not just the one that's on your on your plate at that time. But all the threats that you have to deal with that day and think about how you're going to deal with them if these surface, what's your plan? So be aware have a plan, and you're already two or three steps ahead of the guy is clueless and encounters the threat with surprise and confusion. So that's really the that's the gist of threatening management. If you had to describe it in a breath. It will be threat awareness with a plan. Okay. You use the analogy of the art of war in your right up in some similarities with that. Awesome book and also chess Kelly Freenet talks about it in mastering paragliding, the analogy of chess, and we've all heard this analogy of chess with paragliding. Surprised how often it comes up? But Kelly really talks about it offensively. You use it to talk about a defensively with TM explain that.
00:30:02 - 00:35:04
Yeah. That's right. I really I really enjoyed that analogy. And I know it's used a lot. And I think it's used mostly in terms of offense because people talk about cross country paragliding like it was just because you gotta think two three or four moves ahead. You know, if you're going to get from point A point, B and. I take the analogy one step further, and that is e can't be a good chess player and just be thinking about offense. If you're not thinking about defense, all to also you can have checkmate on your hands. So you've got to be mindful of the defenses. Well, and the interesting thing is the I I think it's the first chapter in Kelly's book, he's got this diagram. Like the first thing he's got in there any kind of diagram a picture in its pyramid of progression. And he talks about how you build the skills that you need to reach the peak. The bottom like foundation foundation and all that kind of stuff and then on. Okay. That's right. That's right. If you flip that triangle upside down, I let me just take a step back real quick that pyramid. Although it may not be just about offense. It I see it mostly as the offense of side of of ah paragliding in terms of the chess analogy, but if you flip it upside down it becomes defense, and it becomes the symbol that we use for threatening management. How the top of the pyramid is is your safe flight. The the top third of the pyramid is your threat that you have to mitigate in the one in the middle is the error in he can't manage that. Then it goes to the undesirable aircraft state points at the ground. And then if you can't correct that then you have an accident or incident. So it's kind of the whole thing upside down, and I think that the saying goes best d. Defense is good offense. And that's true. If I'm playing you and you're playing me in the same game. But that's not the chess. We're talking about the chest that we play against mother nature, and so we're not up against Nico opponent. So that that goes right out the window. That's not the best defense. You have to think of things a little bit differently. You know, as far as a one on one game goes, but yeah, I think that the chess analogies is great. And I think it also applies to defense here. Here's one though that don't one of the things that I'm caught with all the time. And you actually talk about this with guiding and big big mountain skiing and backcountry skiing touring that kind of thing. A lot of the risk that we encounter in the back country. A lot of the threats are really pretty hidden. You know, we might know that you know, we've got a persistent slab problem and we've got we should avoid these kind of angles. You know in these this slope in this perspective. And and we could we could think we're being really safe, and we could ski something that didn't go in. It might have been one percent. And we wouldn't have a clue we'd go back to the car. We'd have a beer would go home. We had no idea that we were pushing it that day. You know, we really thought we nailed it. And I think that that is just totally parallel with paragliding. You know that that? We are. We're often right on the edge. And we don't know it because we have an identified we have an accurate identified the the risk in that one situation in every flight is so unique and it only takes that one time. So how does how do we use TM or affectively to know how close we are to that to going over the edge? And that's a great question. At one of the big disadvantages. We have in paragliding not so much in hang gliding paragliding. You know, I like to say that the one of the coolest things about paragliding is that is that you can take your wing and full it up into a pile the size of rucksack when you're done flying. And the bad thing about paragliding is you can fold up your wing into size about the size of a backpack while you're lying. And and it's true. It we have we have a collapsible wing. And if you fly into tributes, you are introducing a threat that you need to manage and the threat is something that you can't see it's the air. I mean, sometimes you can you can see signs, but you know, you just you can't see air, and you can't really see that. It's doing something that you don't want going over your wing. So that's a huge disadvantage for us. You know, you have to react to that you have to react to turbulence with an input active reactive. And if you do and you keep your wing open you've done your job, and I had SIV instructor one time that that said, you know, your jobs, keep your wing open.
00:35:04 - 00:40:02
My job is to teach you how to fix your wing after you don't. And that's kind of when the light bulb came on for me that you know, if you you've claps Umit mistake, and it's really really hard to accept. That sometimes when the turbulence comes out of nowhere it hits you with so much force that there's no way a normal human being could keep that wing open. But just because you flew your wing into air required, superhuman, skills and reaction doesn't mean that you didn't make him stay you made in air. And now you've gotta deal with a wing that's partially open or not open at all. And so that could result in desirable aircraft state really fast or you could be faced with another threat. You could be faced with the wing that's partially opened that you can fly straight. That's not under an undesirable aircraft state by the book. You've just got another threat handed to you. You gotta wing this partially open so threaten although you would think there's no way that I could do that ignored no way. I could keep my wing opened with that kind of turbulence. You know, theoretically as far as the model goes, you should have been able to. And if you didn't then you've made an error. Now, you've got to correct that error and get yourself back to to save flying environment. So it sounds theoretical in in some ways, but the model still works even as conditions even with art class wings. I think it's I think it's, you know, it's it's interesting invalid to talk about, you know, the turbulence in wing balling up, but statistically, those are still tiny fraction of where actions happen accidents happen landing and and then launching and then way down the line is something happening in the air. You know, it's just not as just not it does happen. But most of the accidents happen near the ground. Mike you said so how can we use? I mean, that's. Getting plot. Rob talked a lot about this in the last by gas. I don't wanna go over that again. But I mean, how can we use TM there in in the critical? What do you call it? Love this critical phase of fly critical phase of flight. And in the airlines below ten thousand feet, we have what we call sterile cockpit procedures where you're not allowed to talk about anything unless it has to do with the flight. You know, you can't talk about the last stock traded. You can't talk about your your drive into operations that morning. All you can talk about is what's going on with this airplane and things that are pertinent to your flight. And when you get a, but the reason one is your is your fairly close to the ground. You blow ten thousand feet, but another is because you've got a high density of air traffic below ten thousand feet because as for general aviation operates and you can't afford to not get a radio call in a timely manner. That would alert you to traffic or a number of other things. So we have the stroke cockpit procedure, even lower we have and it's not a defined altitude. But anytime you're in the approach mode. I'd say both feet you're in a critical phase of flight all the way to landing and then. The beginning of the flight from takeoff until you get to at least a thousand feet. You're also critical phase of flight love this sterile cockpit. Modern we could have we need a different terminology. But you know, how many accidents if we all seen because you know, somebody's been distracted online. They don't do their. They don't do their checks. They haven't clipped in their home it. They haven't done their leg straps. You know, somebody just died the season down in Columbia forgetting to leg straps fell out of their harness. Hap, it hap- just like you said I have my reserve in. It wasn't attached me. Everybody's known those that story it happened to a guy down in Colombia this year. And you know, he got hurt pretty bad. But he lucky, but you know, you don't want to rely on luck. But that's one of those classics like well. Yeah. But, but I'm won't do that that stupid, you know? So that's that's exactly TM comes in. But if you had the sterile cockpit approach to launching and landing I think why landing gets. A lot of people is yet. You've just had. This epic flight tired. You know, you might have been out there for hours, maybe haven't done enough training to have been able to fly for five or six hours. And you're you're pretty beat up, but you're still flying. So you don't recognize it. You know, that your your mind is just not totally they're often after we land after those kind of flights. You have this flood of light wall. I am zombie. You just were flying paraglider.
00:40:02 - 00:45:11
So you were obviously as AVI five years five minutes ago as well. Right before you landed so, but if you had this kind of like, hey heads up, I'm still flying this aircraft here. It's just brag Nuccio had that terrible fifty feet off net coming out of the John LAN where it was just like, you know, you're coming into a soccer field next to a river. How could the air bad there? No. And he got hit and went in from fifty feet up. So I like that concept of just having this chemist. External con cockpit approach to flight, right or just consider a takeoffs and landings as critical phase of flight and eliminate as many external threats as possible in what you talked about some of the internal threats that can can get you are insidious, the especially the ones that that affect you more toward the end of the flight because you're tired dehydrated your partly didn't start out that way. But at the end of the flight may be those things become more prevalent, and it's really hard to recognize those because their internal and just come up on you very gradually. So when you do come in for your your protein landing y'all must have to ask yourself. Okay. How how am I right now? What's my state? What am I dealing with is far as threats goes, particularly the internal threats and external threats to other dusty in the area is is is anybody else having issues with whatever's going on. Sometimes radio call can help a lot in a radio. Call can be very timely and alert you to threat that you weren't aware of swat always advocate people flow radios, 'cause that's your that's your avenue or your channel to receive inputs on threat, and that just widens your threat awareness envelope in in that goes along with flying with others. Same thing flying with others flying with the radio are to a great ways to increase your throat awareness. And another thing that you were talking about in terms of what can you do in? How how can you know, what to look for particularly in, you know, some of those not clipping in type situations, or when you're getting ready to launch is that threaten your management works. Really? Well, both ways you can start with the accident and work it backwards. Find out what the errors were. Yeah. You didn't clip in? Don't don't do that. Okay. I won't. And that's a disservice to ever. Everyone. If you have an accident that involves something like that. And you don't take it to the next level. And explain what it was that caused you to make that or whether it was a distraction or you earn a hurry or you had a new harness and you didn't want for me with clipping in. I have to admit so work at back through the earth to the threats like in my case when I threw my reserve over the desert, and in it wasn't attached deal. The night before I switched all by gear. I was super tired sick. You know, it was dark. I didn't wanna wake up my girlfriend. You know? So I was kind of doing in the dark, and it was like midnight. And then I had to get in the car early. The next morning drive down hook up with Cody in go practice Aker over the desert, you know, a whole litany of threats there that you know, that I was out of it. Well, here's the thing about the airlines if there's an accident or incident, it gets it gets looked at very closely. There's investigate. Nation, and there's a board and these guys get together. And they find out what mistakes remain why they were made and they identified the threats, and then they turn around normally, though other changed the way we do our training or they'll change up the checklist or they'll change the procedure, and they'll give us built in threaten litigation through their findings in change the way we fly. So the chance of that action happening again or radically reduced exactly don't see the same thing over and over. If it's if it's just somebody had just made a mistake, and in the couldn't really bring it back to any kind of threat. The guy just screwed up. They'll send him back to training, and they'll get that person straightened out. But if they find an era in uncover a threat caused it that could also surface in trip up another pilots somewhere than likely, they'll institute, some kind of threat mitigation throughout the entire operation. Now, here's the thing. No one's going to do that for us. We don't have anyone, you know, looking at our accidents in doing investigations and uncovering all this information, it's up to us to do that. And we can we're enabled. If we understand this this model, it's the same model. Airlines use you just step it back in I Dennis threats that induce the heirs. And then once you had done a fide him come up with a plan of mitigation come up with a plan to manage them for us with the with the clipping in can build a little defensive of mitigation.
00:45:11 - 00:50:02
Call checklists can make make a checklist that catches those things and do that checklist. Every time we fly. And if we don't do the checklist because we forgot it or we were in a hurry. We made an error. That's an air. And now, and now you're you're thinking things through a little bit more leeway. There lines work wear your line pile. It's fly. Now, you're introducing more Aaron you're into your game. But it might be inconsequential. But it's still an error. And it may not matter that day but one day when you got when you have new harness. You're in a hurry. You got distracted. Now, you depending on that defensive checklist to catch the air and save you a love how this ties into the last show in some ways with with raw because we were talking about ravishes checklist. He has this thing where if he makes three mistakes before he takes off he doesn't fly in the mistakes can be let's call them errors won't stick with TM. If the heirs are, they can be really minor. But if there's three then he sits back and goes, wait a minute. What's wrong with me today that I mean that could be as little as like you forget to put his phone on his flight deck or forgets to turn its tracking on stuff that you can easily do in the air, you know, but that would add a little bit of risk. So I love that's a great system. That I think everybody should just take on board right now. But capturing the threat at the air level, right? And maybe they're inconsequential heirs heirs us making before he flies. But he can step it back and say, okay, I'm pretty tired today. Yeah. Or I'm I've got something on my mind right now, it's not letting me feet my mind on flying. And so he's actually that's pretty advanced. He's using threaten your management on the fly. That's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, it's it, but we need we need a means of identifying that these things we need a means of identifying that you're tired. We can all be tired. And we know we're tired. But, you know, without without having a something that we can feel in hold and touch and see like that, you know, like this this real easy checklist. And that's just that's that reaffirms. Hey, you're you're tired. But you're also you're not thinking very well. You know, I'm going to be tired and the X apps. That's inevitable. If he trained for it. And all. Essays? But in even in the exile. There was a day in twenty fifteen where I launched and my Horace was all screwed up. You know, because I was I wasn't thinking clearly, and I spun around top landed, and, you know, but it was radically pretty on day really increased my risk, you know. And so on recreational day, I would have if I'd had this system. I would have not flown would have been like, oh, I don't I'm not even clipping incorrectly. So let's let's let's run from that describe the difference between threaten air management in risk management. Greg dovetail 'cause I was just going to talk about that. With what you just said, you know, sometimes we we are tired, and we know we're tired, but we still decide to fly and that happens, but from the minute, we leave the ground until the minute, we touched down. Again, we're committed to that flight. And if we launch knowing retired which will have. Even the important thing is to realize that in understand that it's going to lower your level of performance and any other threat that you need to manage didn't requires you to to use active reactive mitigation at McGill like, for instance, flying through Lisa, maybe maybe it's a fifteen kilometers day in of wind in decided so category on the Lee. Maybe that's okay. When you're on your game. But if you're tired, maybe that's not the day to do it. So that's a good way of looking at the difference between threaten your management and risk management. Now risk management is still valid in. We still use it in the airlines, and everyone I think everyone should be using risk management. But risk management is a little bit. Like taking all of the bits and pieces all of the different threats in errors that you can think of that are gonna be valid or possible for that day and assessing them. Mm-hmm. At before you fly, you know, most important thing to do. I think is is defined these things if you have to manage something you should be able to define it. And the definition of risk is the likelihood or probability of something going wrong. And. The the consequence of what happens if it does. It's it's sort of a two part thing 'em, you you could have you could have day.
00:50:02 - 00:55:01
You know, you could you could have a. I can't think of a good example off the cuff. But if if something goes wrong, and it doesn't affect anything. There's no risk. It's very small chance of something going wrong and is a massive amount of loss. If it does that also is risk. And risk management is is important risk assessment. I should say I think is more important. But it's something that you do before you fly something you do choose whether you're gonna fly or not that day. And in some cases, if you accept a large amount of risk any decide to fly, and you're aware of that risk than you change the way you fly you change each change your flight accordingly. You keep a larger margin of safety when you fly with a lot of increased risk than I if if you flew with less risk now once you commit to flight, it's very difficult to manage risk, in my opinion because risk is a cocktail of threats in Ayers, and you're much better off keeping your eye on the ball and focusing on individual threats as you go when you're actively flying. It's I think it's just too much for the dynamic flight environment that we have is pilots, obviously something like a massive Cumulus shows up. You know, that's gonna that's gonna be a gimme obvious risk that you don't want. You're going to have to land you really should land. But if you're dealing with lots of little things. A little bit tired. You your little bit dehydrated? You know, you've got a little bit of turbulence you got a new wing all those things combined equal risk, but it's gonna be a lot harder to deal with those at risk level. It's gonna be much better off his pilot to focus on the threats in the errors while while you're flying. I think of I think of risk as something that you know, you use to decide whether you're gonna fly or not that day is something that a. A safety director would use to decide whether or not would have task that day. But once you start flying risk in error management. I think is the way to go. I wouldn't imagine you know, I used to call sailing ninety nine percent boredom in one percent sheer terror. Do you do in the airline industry? Do you have? Incidences that are truly terrifying. I'm sure some do, but we'll we'll every pilot in their career have a because one of the things that we talk about on the I'm gonna let 'em tight where I'm going with this because otherwise we'll make sense. Most free front. Flight pilots will be scared shitless at some point in their career. Maybe all unless you're just weird. You know, I it some point you're going to have an incident that's gonna really scare you. And depending on how the incident goes down, and how you process fear and your own history with you know, with scary things. I mean, people come back from those instantly never in everything in between continuum help us with that. I think he can you know, I think fears is very difficult thing to work with. Sometimes if your fear is from something that you you don't understand or a can. Get your arms around. Sometimes if you can determine exactly what it is that you're afraid of in get to really understand that that thing whatever it is. And then come up with methods of mitigation or how to manage that that threat or that fear than I think the fear melts away, if you're frayed of something in general terms in you can't put your finger on exactly specifically what it is that you're fried of in. It's a lot more difficult. I think but if you can if you can pinpoint. You know, what it is that made makes you fearful then I think that you know, you can you can overcome that by understanding it and having a plan to deal with it. 'cause I imagine like like, you know, of course, this is Hollywood, but you know, watching the movie solely. I I am. I would imagine that there was very little or no fear for him going through that. And then it hit like did in the movie the movie opens with him in that kind of dream sequence. What you just like going through the city know the wings hitting the buildings and stuff and imagine the fear for him hit afterwards. Like, oh my God. I'm responsible for all these people. But in the moment, it was probably his his training and solving the problem.
00:55:02 - 01:00:01
I have had many incidences when my paraglider where you know, you're you're you don't have time for fear. You just got to solve the problem. You gotta fix it. But then afterwards, it's like holy cow. That could that was really that was cutting the edge those cutting pretty close there. Yeah. I'm just wondering how. We can use this model, or if you you know, if if if if if you know after incidences do the does the airline industry have to deal with fear in their own pilots is that is that on a kind of a one by one. You know, you go see the psychoanalyst or is it or or does this model? Help us. I think airline finds pretty controlled. And I don't think we normally have too many things that happen. That would cause a fear injury. It's possible that if you had something really crazier wild happened to you. And it could than you might have that might have that issue. But yeah, it's it's it's a pretty controlled environment is I I I'm concerned. Anyway, maybe not everybody would agree with me on that. But in a fear isn't bad thing. I think fears good it's self-preservation, I think that you know, fears essentially threat awareness for perceived awareness without really understanding exactly what it is. And I think once once you pinpoint the thing that you're afraid of in. You can understand it in have confidence. In managing the fear. The fear would will melt away. Do you find yourself in your own flying? Helen, you've been paragliding four started. Okay. Do you find yourself because you're so intimate with this system and flying airplanes in use to that environment of checklists, and you know, the sterile cockpit hundred ten thousand in all these things you've been talking about do you find that? That's just naturally. Wow. You think about preflight is wild. You find you're using that system quite naturally. At first, I didn't I think that you know, we all we all have a crossover experience of a number of different crossover experiences that we bring over with us when we para glad I mean, you for example, you've got a lot of good experience in in free flow, gravity sports and in. I think in kayaking you've got some great ability at reading water which water air they're both fluids and they both worked similarly in. So you're -bility read water. I'm sure translates your -bility read air, even though you can't see it. You can imagine it. And that's a that's that's a very important thing. I think and you know, your your time on a boat and sailing around the world. I'm sure that you've had a number of situations where you had to, you know, make safety assessments in and deal with threats in in the not let them get the best of you. And some sure you've crossed lot of that over engine into paragliding. And so there's some crossover from me from flying in the airlines in a lot of it has to do with the safety culture. Maybe I have a little bit. Maybe Trump to cool eight a little bit more than others. Because I I was involved in some safety audits that the force meet, you know, sitting on that force me, but I sat in the jump seat and observe crews making mistakes and having threats in come come their way and see how they manage them. And and then I had to take all the all the notes from those flights at put them through the threaten your model and in show how things were done and it's called. Safety audit. Low says the term we use for that line oriented safety audit. And the reason we do that is we we try to a little bit like a readiness which trying to discover where the threats are before they need to an accident. So we zurve flights were snorkel everyday flights. And we we watch crews encounter threats and Mick errors. Manage the threats in manage the airs, and we put those through credit huge database hundreds of flights. We try to identify threats that were not aware of or that we're not managing very well. And then we use that information to change our procedures are checklists in our training is sort of a proactive method of of dealing with threats. And like, I said hats off to ravage he's doing his own Los on himself and any sticking cure things. You know before they go down that road.
01:00:01 - 01:05:02
That's so that's big crossover. I have from from my job from flying is that threaten your management. And I think it's something everybody can use even if you understand it just fractionally and just barely get the gist of it as long as you can recognize that that threats that are managed well lead to Iraqis. Hours you need to be aware of the threat, and you need to have a plan to deal with it. You're already miles ahead of anybody else. You know, the hasn't looked at flying in that way. And I think it's potentially really helpful for flying community. If we think of our flight terms of threats in areas as we fly, basically defensive flying. But it gives you something to focus on now. I like the second p the planned and preparation, you know, I I think that you know, what the launch example that we used that that could be one where what if you're totally on that day you've done all your checklists. You've nailed it you walk up the launch. And you have Rick Zena moment, you know, really good pilot. So let's let's in with what listen with him. You know, what Robyn I talked about with the plucking in that kind of thing is that you know, if you walk up to launch in. You're not sure you've got those moves in those conditions than. You probably don't have them. You know, you haven't done enough training evident enough ground handling. You don't have the, you know, you're not confident enough that you can handle the big gusts that are coming through. And that and that's your threat assessment you've done the threat assessment. And you're you're not there. So you know, you're not gonna have the surprise. You're not gonna have the pluck because you're not gonna fly avoid it. Or you you do you have done the preparation, you're not gonna get pluck because you really good at high wind launching. So let's talk about Rick. And then we'll end it there. Sure. Yeah. Great example. I'm Rick Zena. I'm sure you all know is next pilot, and he was flying in Manila, just recently and an video of a dust devil that the pluck them in took him for for a ride when viral, and it was just as Lang amazing the watch. And I would say that that classifies is incident wasn't an accident. But it was an incident and like any every accident in incident happens whether happens to you or a friend of yours it needs to be looked at. I think. It needs to be pushed through this threat near management model. So that we can identify threats and uncover the Air's. So that we all know what happened in why they happened. So that we can all come up with a plan to deal with them in the future, and this right up in cross country magazine did just that it was just perfect really good. They were talking about dust devils. They talked about how they happen where they happen. The the gave us background on it background information. So that we understood them then they talked about where they can happen. If you're in a place like that like, a they were they were in the of some light flow, which is where dusty to spawn. So they say if you're in an area where the dust devils of possible you need to be aware of that in too. Yeah. You need to have a discussion with your with your flying partners. Look we're in an area where dust devils could happen. And if they do this is the plan and first thing is to communicate that somebody sees one. They let everybody else know as quickly as possible in the they have a plan. They take action, and they talked about the best things that you can do if you do have a dust devil is need to grab those wings. And don't don't just jump on him grabbing end. And then hold that end. So that the wing can't power behold, two ends guess what you're hanging onto something that can take you for a ride and in its somebody's clipped in them as well. I'm so they identified some potential errors in if you do make, you know, if you make one of those years, and you'll be aware of that as you make it, and then you can correct the as need be. So the takeaway I got from that right up. It was really well done is they took. The incident not an accident. But incident, and they they did the front six on it. And they found out what the threat was how you can mitigate the threat if you know if you're encountered with the same thing and in which gives everybody away ahead. So that if they do have doubles in the area, they know what to do. They know how to best managed at threat and prevent something like that from happening again or doing something even worse.
01:05:03 - 01:07:15
And I heard that he went on fly like hundred seventy one hundred eighty K or something. So yeah, that's on hats off ball. I know how to nations that dude is. So that was pretty amazing. So I'm glad that all work down. I'm glad it was an incident not an accident JK. Thanks very much. I really appreciate it super valuable advice and thoughts. Very interesting machine. It thanksgiving. Still. Hope you enjoyed that. Always fun to sit down with these great pilots in different parts of the world super inspiring. As always always ask for a bucket show. If you're getting something out of the cloud base, mayhem there, many ways you can support it either financially through pay pal and soon to be directly through our website. We'll have details of that up pretty soon. But if you can't support us, financially, we totally understand this will remain free as long as we can do it. But you can support it in many other ways, you can give us on a rating on itunes or Stitcher, or however, you listen to your podcast that really goes a long ways, you can blog about it on your own blog post about it on social media share it with your friends talk about it on the way to launch and many many of your doing that. I really appreciate it. And another way you can sport us through our store. We just got a whole new load of awesome, Patagonia, t shirts for men and women and a whole new box of superstar trucker hats by Rick. Capps H one is totally unique got a whole bunch more colors that seem to be more in favor. So go to cloud base may dot com. Click on the store link and get some cool Shwak. That's another great latest sports show. But yeah, get behind us. We're doing this directly just through you sponsors because I just can't stand having that whole sponsor thing at the top of the show. And I want you to know that it's a authentic conversation. It's just opinions and they're not being skewed by advertising dollars, which I think is pretty toxic thing. That's happening going on right now globally Thala stuff going on with Facebook. And and other. So anyway, we'd like to do a direct. We've pre she ate your sport. And we'll see on the next one. Cheers.