The lost aviator

A significant emerging study suggests that flightcrew have never been properly trained for operating highly automated aircraft, and that for many of the problems they have to deal with there are no checklists, leaving the pilots to manage using ingenuity and airmanship. http://www.bidnessetc.com/39771-airbus-group-safety-official-seeks-changes-in-pilot-training/ https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/faa-study-finds-serious-flaws-in-pilot-training-for-handling-349371/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ieR8hIXUIg Beginning with 2013 also Europe has now its own possibillity that you will feel the awesome feeling of weightlessness: from two destinations, Bordeaux and Paris (Le Bourget) the Airbus A300 of "Novespace" will take you to weightlessness conditions! You will feel during the 2 hours flight 15 parabolas, 2 Mars G (1/3 G Earth gravity), 2 Moon G (1/6 G Earth gravity) and 11 Zero G (0G). The special flight maneuvres of the Airbus will make this parabolic flight very comfortable for you. You are seated during ascent and descent, and you will have a lot of space still around you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT5gUKJidi0 This is a documentary series which follows the lives of British pilots who work for Indonesian airline Susi Air in Indonesia Bush pilots Documentary following rookie pilots in the Okavango Delta, Botswana https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8hFXSVLuwY

Being a pilot is not just about flying airplanes. Being a pilot is about living a philosophy that prepares you for moments in the air when your reaction is the difference between life and death... Before you ever walk out to your airplane, start your preflight, or hit the starter, consciously take a deep breath, and then begin. http://disciplesofflight.com/zen-art-pilot/

We live in times of seemingly unending progress - and yet somehow things still always go wrong: trains are late, broadband speeds suck and the promotion always goes to the wrong person. Well, it turns out there's an explanation for all this - and progress itself is the problem. Meet The Peter Principle. The Peter principle assumes that people are promoted because they are competent, and that the task higher up in the hierarchy require skills or talent that they do not possess. It concludes that due to this, a competent employee will eventually be promoted to, and remain at, a position at which he or she is incompetent. https://youtu.be/-ZDdxYBaFsw

One of the most important reasons about finding out how the mind works, is that you can know how to avoid making some mistakes. The most important ones related to aviation accidents. In this video Professor Daniel Kahneman, eminent psychologist,  explores the brain and describes two systems. System one is immediate, easy, effortless, creates stories based on ideas not facts because it is associative, and therefore it is prone to error. On the other hand, system two is effortful, tiring, needs procedures to resolve problems and is, at the same time, lazy and endorses system one, even without checking whether system one is correct or not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0

Some food for thought. Although we may think it is funny, group conformity is more serious than it appears. You are able to say things that you don't even see or act in a way that you wouldn't ever imagined. Unions, corporate spirit may make us say and act in a way we don't really think. We are inevitably social animals, and we need to get along with our fellows in order to be well enough, but it could end up being a problem if you don't understand assertiveness, and just get swept away by what others think or say... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrNIuFrso8I