For decades, the world has benefited from continual improvement in commercial air transport safety. However, in some high-profile accidents over the last few years, airline pilots failed to react as expected when suddenly surprised by critical situations. In some cases, these pilots reacted ineffectively or inappropriately — or even failed to react at all in a timely manner.
Recent interviews with Australian airline pilots, a flight simulator experiment, analysis of selected reports on airline accidents and serious incidents, and a literature review including insights from neuroscience and psychology suggest that pathological reactions induced by severe startle — or by consequent acute stress reactions called freezing and denial — may occur more often than the aviation community realizes. Some subject specialists label extreme startle as strong or serious.
Any such inaction-type behavior potentially has significant effects on aviation sa…
