There is an unspoken language, although sometimes it ripens into discussion, associated with the threat and error management (TEM) process. It is a simple language of just three “words.” Commonly known and widely used, these words have a connection to the world of TEM that has gone unnoticed. The three words are: Huh?, Whoa! and Phew!
From the aviation safety perspective, the word Huh? is the most important; the others flow from it. There are two common usages of the word Huh. The first is “Huh. I didn’t know that.” The second is “Huh? I wonder what that is.” For the purposes of TEM, we are only interested in the second. So why are we interested? Because this word is an identifier of a potential threat or hazard. We utter Huh? when something doesn’t make sense, when we hear a sound or experience a sensation that we cannot explain, or observe something that we didn’t expect.
Huh? is an involuntar…
