The ability to identify problems accurately, gather relevant information, generate genuine options and commit to well-timed decisions — adapting as situations evolve.
Opinionated, experience-led analysis of Problem Solving and Decision Making on the real flight deck.
Every crew carries a decision-making framework. Most have never actually practised it. That gap — between knowing the model and using it under pressure — is where failures happen.
Detailed articles on individual observable behaviours — the specific skills the framework assesses.
The quality of a decision is largely determined before it is made. The right priorities, genuine options, and confident commitment.
Get the diagnosis wrong and the rest is invalid. The engine failure is not the problem. What it changes is the problem — and whether its cause could affect other systems changes everything about the picture the crew is managing.
A decision is only as good as the information it is built on. Accuracy requires currency. And experience is the most valuable — and most carefully applied — source of all, because it carries the highest risk of false transposition.
The acronyms exist because the alternative is unstructured thinking under pressure. A problem-solving framework doesn’t just improve decisions — it starts the process, builds the team, and provides the shared language that keeps the crew working together when it matters most.
Risk is not a binary. Identifying it correctly — likelihood against consequence — is the prerequisite for managing it at all.
A safety-critical problem demands that the crew invest what it takes to solve it fully. The discipline to stay with a difficult problem — while keeping the wider picture current — is built in normal operations or it is not reliably available in the non-normal.
Involving others is not a concession of authority. It is subjecting your solution to scrutiny before it becomes action — and arriving at the decision with a ready-made contingency and a crew that owns the outcome together.
Making the right call is only half the job. The half most pilots underestimate is knowing when to change it — and having the discipline to do so without ego.
Every operations manual contains one clause that turns everything over. The commander may deviate from published procedures as necessary in the interest of safety. This is the most demanding ask in the framework — and it arrives at the worst possible moment.
HPP maps every Problem Solving and Decision Making behaviour across three development levels — with structured prompts to build honest self-assessment into your regular flying. Free to start.
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