Problem solving and decision making is one of the nine ICAO core competencies for pilots. It describes how a crew diagnoses what has gone wrong, gathers the information it needs, generates and risk-assesses options, commits to a course of action and reviews it as the situation changes.
Frameworks such as TDODAR, FORDEC, PIOSEE and DECIDE give that process a structure. Different letters, same four questions: what problem do we actually have, what are the options, what are the risks, and what outcome do we expect? And every decision holds only as long as the circumstances it was made in.
The models only work under pressure if the crew has practised them when there was none.
Ask any professional pilot whether they have a structured approach to problem solving and decision making, and the answer will almost always be yes. Ask them when they last deliberately practised it outside of an emergency scenario — outside of the simulator, outside of a non-normal procedure, on an ordinary sector — and the answer is usually silence.
That gap is the problem. Problem Solving and Decision Making is the one Core Competency where most pilots believe competence is a given. They have a framework. They know the acronym. They've used it in the sim. But frameworks that are only activated under pressure, by people who haven't built the underlying habits in normal operations, produce slow, incomplete, and sometimes wrong outputs at exactly the moment when slow, incomplete and wrong are most costly.
The Framework Is Not the Competency
TDODAR, FORDEC, DECIDE — the specific acronym matters less than the structure it represents. All of the established frameworks share the same foundational logic: diagnose first, then options, then decide, then act, then review. The sequence is deliberate. Each step depends on the one before it.
The step that is most consistently undervalued is the first one. Diagnosis is not simply identifying what has gone wrong. It is understanding what the end state of the problem actually is — what it means for the flight, the aircraft, the crew, and the passengers — and how that end state then constrains every option that follows. A crew that rushes past diagnosis to get to options is generating solutions to a problem they haven't yet fully understood. That is not decision making. It is guessing with structure.
The framework begins with diagnosis for a reason. A crew that skips it doesn't make faster decisions — it makes poorly-framed ones.
The second most undervalued step is the review. Decisions made under pressure, with incomplete information, in dynamic environments, need to be revisited. The situation changes. The initial diagnosis may have been wrong. New information arrives. A decision that was correct at the moment it was made may need to be changed — and changing it is not a failure. Refusing to change it when the evidence demands it is.
Different Letters, Same Destination
Most pilots learn one decision-making model, usually the one their operator trains, and assume the others are different tools. They aren't. T-DODAR, FOR-DEC, PIOSEE and DECIDE were developed by different organisations, in different countries, for slightly different audiences. They all arrive at the same place.
| Model | Stands for | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| T‑DODAR | Time, Diagnose, Options, Decide, Assign, Review | DODAR with a "T" added, usually credited to British Airways, so the crew establishes how much time it has before anything else. Widely used by UK operators. |
| FOR‑DEC | Facts, Options, Risks and benefits – Decision, Execution, Check | Developed by Lufthansa and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the early 1990s. Used across European airlines, and since adopted in medicine and the nuclear industry. |
| PIOSEE | Problem, Information, Options, Select, Execute, Evaluate | Taught by a number of airlines and training organisations, often in initial and multi-crew training. |
| DECIDE | Detect, Estimate, Choose, Identify, Do, Evaluate | The FAA's model, from the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. Widely taught in general aviation and US flight training. |
Strip away the letters and every one of them is asking the same four questions.
1. What problem do we actually have? Not the caution that started it, but the problem you end up with. A hydraulic failure is the trigger. The problem you end up with may be a longer landing distance, no nosewheel steering and a destination runway that is now marginal. That is the problem the rest of the process has to solve.
2. What are our options? More than one, and including doing nothing, if only to rule it out explicitly.
3. What are the risks and threats attached to each option? An option isn't really an option until its threats are known: the weather, the runway, the fuel, the workload it creates, the support available when you get there.
4. What outcome do we expect? Said aloud, in terms both pilots can check: where we expect to be, when, with how much fuel, and in what state.
Lay the models side by side against those four questions and the overlap is obvious. So are the gaps.
| The question | T‑DODAR | FOR‑DEC | PIOSEE | DECIDE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What problem do we have? | Time, Diagnose | Facts | Problem, Information | Detect, Estimate |
| What are the options? | Options | Options | Options | Identify |
| What are the risks? | Not named | Risks and benefits | Not named | Not named |
| What outcome do we expect? | Not named | Not named | Not named | Choose (the desired outcome) |
| Decide and act | Decide, Assign | Decision, Execution | Select, Execute | Do |
| Is it still valid? | Review | Check | Evaluate | Evaluate |
Only FOR-DEC names the risks. Only DECIDE comes close to naming the outcome. Those are the two questions most easily skipped, and they are the two that matter most once the decision has been made, because they are what the decision gets reviewed against. Whichever model your operator trains, ask all four questions anyway.
A Decision Only Holds While the Circumstances Do
The part of decision making that is least taught is also the most important. Every decision is made against a picture: the weather, the fuel, the state of the aircraft, the airfield, the people on board. The decision is valid for as long as that picture stays the same, and no longer. When the circumstances change, the decision hasn't failed. It has expired.
This is why the expected outcome matters so much. If the crew has said, "We expect to be on the ground at the alternate in 35 minutes with 2,400 kg, the problem contained," it has something to measure against. When reality starts to drift from that expectation, the drift is the trigger to go round the loop again. A crew that never stated an expected outcome has nothing to compare against, and tends to notice the change late, usually when the option it was relying on has already gone.
A decision isn't a destination. It's the best answer to the problem as it stood when you made it. When the problem changes, so must the answer.
The practical habit is to set the review point at the moment the decision is made, and to make it a trigger as well as a time. "We'll review at top of descent" is good. "We'll review at top of descent, or straight away if the alternate goes below minima or the fuel at the hold drops below 2,000 kg" is better, because both pilots now know what would invalidate the plan, and either of them can call it.
The designers of FOR-DEC built this pause into the name. The hyphen between the R and the D is there to make the crew stop and ask whether anything has been missed before committing. Researchers revisiting the model twenty years later found the hyphen had largely disappeared in practice, and that the final Check was the step most often skipped in the rush to act. That is the drift every model is vulnerable to. The letters survive. The pause and the review quietly disappear.
Letting go of a decision is harder than making one. Plan continuation bias, the pull to keep going with a plan because it is already in motion, is one of the most persistent threats on the flight deck. A crew that has agreed in advance what would change its mind has already done most of the work of resisting it. Changing the decision then isn't indecision. It's the process doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Matching the Model to the Time Available
Not every problem gets the full model, and that is the reason the T was added to DODAR. An engine fire after V1 is not the moment for a structured discussion of options. The aircraft is flown, the memory items and checklist are completed, and the problem is contained first. The model comes afterwards, when the aircraft is safe and there is time to think about where to take it.
The opposite error is just as common: rushing a decision when there is time available. A crew with 40 minutes of fuel and a stable aircraft has time to diagnose properly, to bring in the cabin, the company and ATC, and to think about the outcome it expects. Time is part of the diagnosis. Establishing how much there is sets the pace for everything that follows.
The research on FOR-DEC found one more trap worth knowing about: pilots using the model to justify a decision they had already made, filling in the letters after the event. It is particularly common in the simulator, where the model can feel like something to be seen doing. A model used that way adds time and no value. Used properly, on ordinary sectors and small decisions, it becomes the way a crew thinks rather than something it performs. Once the decision is made, a NITS brief (Nature, Intentions, Time, Special instructions) is how it reaches the cabin crew, which is where the Communication competency takes over.
Why Practice Is the Prerequisite
Structured decision making is a cognitive skill. Like any cognitive skill, it degrades without use and improves with deliberate practice. The error most pilots make is treating the framework as something to be retrieved from memory when needed, rather than something to be maintained as a live habit.
The consequence is that when a real non-normal arrives — when the workload is high, the time is short, and the outcome is uncertain — the crew is running the framework for the first time under conditions that are exactly wrong for first-time execution. The steps that should be automatic require conscious effort. The language that should flow requires retrieval. The pauses that should be disciplined feel like lost time.
The fix is straightforward in principle. Use the framework in normal operations. Not as a formal procedure, but as a mental habit. When a minor irregularity arises — an unexpected clearance change, a systems message that requires a decision, a weather development that changes the plan — run the diagnostic step deliberately. Ask what the end state of this situation actually is. Consider the options explicitly. Risk-assess them. Commit to a decision and state it. Review it ten minutes later.
Doing this on sectors where the stakes are low builds the habit that makes the framework reliable when the stakes are not. The simulator cannot replicate this accumulation. It can test the output but it cannot build the underlying habit. That is built on the line, across hundreds of ordinary decisions, by pilots who treat every small problem as a practice opportunity.
Options Must Be Risk-Assessed
Generating options is not enough. Every option needs to be evaluated against the same framework: what is the benefit, what is the risk, what are the alternatives, and what happens if we do nothing. This is not a bureaucratic exercise. It is the mechanism that prevents crews from selecting the first viable option they identify — which is almost never the best one — and from overlooking the do-nothing option, which is sometimes correct and more often correctly eliminates itself when stated explicitly.
For each option under consideration, four questions: What is the benefit of this course of action? What is the risk? Is there an alternative we haven't considered? What happens if we do nothing? The value of the last question is often underestimated. Stating "if we do nothing, X happens" forces the crew to confront the real cost of inaction — and occasionally reveals that inaction is in fact the safest immediate response.
Threat and Error Management sits beneath all of this. The options a crew generates, and the one they select, need to be evaluated against the threat environment — not just against the immediate problem. A solution that resolves the technical issue while increasing crew workload, reducing situational awareness, or degrading communication creates new threats even as it addresses the presenting one. The best decisions reduce the total threat load. The worst ones redistribute it.
The Competency Connections That Matter
Problem Solving and Decision Making does not operate in isolation. It is perhaps the most connection-dependent competency in the framework — because good decision making requires inputs from almost every other competency, and its outputs affect all of them.
What Good Actually Looks Like
A crew that has developed this competency doesn't look dramatic when a problem arrives. They look methodical. The Captain calls the situation — states what they know, what they don't know, and what they think the end state is if nothing changes. The First Officer adds to the picture or corrects it. Together they generate options, state them explicitly, and risk-assess each one. They select a course of action, state it clearly, and assign tasks. They set a review point.
The point is not the duration of the process — it is that the process happens at all, that both crew members contribute to it, and that the decision is made consciously rather than by default.
The crews who struggle are the ones who skip straight to action. Who identify the problem and immediately start doing things without pausing to diagnose, without generating options, without risk-assessing. Their actions may be correct. But they are operating on instinct rather than process, and instinct — however good — is not a reliable substitute for structured thinking in a novel, high-stakes situation.
- The situation called aloud: what we know, what we don’t, and the end state if nothing changes.
- Diagnosis finished before options are discussed.
- The First Officer’s view asked for before the Captain gives theirs.
- Each option risk-assessed, including doing nothing.
- The decision stated, tasks assigned and a review point set.
- A decision changed without fuss when new information arrives.
- Switches moving before anyone has said what the problem is.
- The first workable option taken without looking for others.
- An option chosen without its risks being said aloud.
- A decision announced rather than reached.
- No review point, so the plan is never revisited.
- Sticking with a decision because changing it feels like admitting a mistake.
The crews who look calm in a non-normal aren't the ones who are least affected by the pressure. They're the ones who practised when the pressure wasn't there.
Problem Solving and Decision Making is the competency that determines whether a crew's knowledge, awareness, and communication are deployed effectively when it matters most. It cannot be improvised. It can only be practised — and the place to practise it is not the simulator. It is every sector, every decision, every ordinary problem that doesn't feel like a training opportunity but is.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is problem solving and decision making in aviation?
Problem solving and decision making is one of the nine ICAO core competencies used in competency-based and evidence-based training. It describes how a crew identifies and diagnoses a problem, gathers the information it needs, generates and risk-assesses options, commits to a course of action, and reviews that decision as the situation develops. It is assessed through observable behaviours, not by whether the outcome happened to be good.
What does TDODAR stand for?
TDODAR is a decision-making aid used by many operators: Time, Diagnose, Options, Decide, Assign, Review. It starts by establishing how much time is available, which sets the pace for everything that follows, and it finishes with a review, because a decision made with incomplete information may need to change.
What does FORDEC stand for?
FORDEC (or FOR-DEC) is a decision-making model developed by Lufthansa and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and widely used in European aviation: Facts, Options, Risks and benefits, Decision, Execution, Check. It follows the same logic as TDODAR: establish the facts before generating options, weigh each option before deciding, and check the outcome once the decision has been carried out.
Which decision-making model should pilots use?
Usually the one their operator trains, practised until it is fluent. TDODAR, FORDEC, PIOSEE and DECIDE share the same structure: diagnose, consider options, decide, act and review. What makes the difference under pressure is not which acronym a crew uses but whether they have used it often enough on ordinary sectors for it to run smoothly when it matters.
Are all pilot decision-making models the same?
In structure, yes. T-DODAR, FOR-DEC, PIOSEE and DECIDE all ask the same four questions: what problem do we actually have, what are the options, what are the risks attached to each, and what outcome do we expect? They then act on the decision and review it. The letters differ, and some models name steps that others leave implicit. FOR-DEC is the only one that names the risks, and DECIDE the only one that comes close to naming the expected outcome.
What is the difference between DODAR and T-DODAR?
T-DODAR is DODAR (Diagnose, Options, Decide, Assign, Review) with a T for Time added at the front, usually credited to British Airways. The crew first establishes how much time is available, because that sets the pace of everything that follows. A time-critical problem is flown and contained first; a problem with time available is worth diagnosing properly.
What does PIOSEE stand for?
PIOSEE is a decision-making model used by a number of airlines and training organisations: Problem, Information, Options, Select, Execute, Evaluate. It follows the same logic as TDODAR and FORDEC: understand the problem, gather information, generate options, choose one, carry it out and evaluate whether it is still working.
What does DECIDE stand for in aviation?
DECIDE is the FAA's decision-making model from the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge: Detect, Estimate, Choose, Identify, Do, Evaluate. The pilot detects that something has changed, estimates the need to respond, chooses the desired outcome, identifies the actions that will achieve it, does them, and evaluates the result.
Why does a decision need to be reviewed?
Because a decision is only valid while the circumstances it was made in remain unchanged. Weather, fuel, the state of the aircraft and the airfield all change. Stating the expected outcome when the decision is made gives the crew something to measure against, and setting a review trigger, as well as a time, means either pilot can call for the decision to be revisited the moment the picture changes.
How is problem solving and decision making assessed in the simulator?
Instructors and examiners look at the process as well as the outcome: whether the crew diagnosed before acting, sought information from the right sources, involved both pilots, considered and risk-assessed more than one option, stated the decision clearly, and reviewed it as things changed. A good outcome reached by skipping the process suggests the competency still needs work.
The Behaviours
Problem Solving and Decision Making is assessed through nine observable behaviours. These deep dives cover them.
Across Every Sector
HPP maps all nine Problem Solving and Decision Making behaviours across three development levels — with structured prompts to build the diagnostic and decision-making habits that make the framework reliable under pressure. Free to start.
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