Problem Solving and Decision Making sits at the end of the Core Competency framework for a reason. It is the competency that all other competencies lead to. Leadership and Teamwork shapes how you gather and weigh input. Communication determines the quality of information flowing into your assessment. Knowledge gives you the tools to diagnose correctly. But the output — the moment where all of that processing results in a course of action — belongs to COMP-09.
Within that competency, one behaviour carries particular weight: making decisions when needed, then reviewing and changing them when required. It sounds straightforward. In practice, two distinct failure modes sit on either side of it. The first is the pilot who delays or avoids the decision — waiting for certainty that rarely arrives, letting the situation degrade while options narrow. The second is the pilot who makes the decision and then considers it closed — who treats commitment as a virtue even when circumstances have shifted fundamentally beneath it.
Both failures are costly. Both are more common than most pilots would admit about themselves.
"Decisions are the end product of fact-finding and analysis. Once reached, they must be reviewed for continuing validity. Our world is dynamic — ever-changing — and the decisions we make can lose their validity."
What It Actually Is
A decision is the end product of a process — not the beginning of one. It emerges from gathering information, diagnosing the situation, developing options, and then committing to the most appropriate course of action available at that moment. In a multi-crew environment, that process should be collaborative. The greater and more varied the input, the better the diagnosis, and therefore the better the decision. But the final call belongs to the team leader. Collaborative process, individual accountability.
What distinguishes high-performing crews from average ones is not the quality of their initial decisions under pressure — it is the quality of their review. Aviation is a dynamic environment. The diagnosis that was accurate at top of descent may not be accurate on final. The contingency plan that made sense at the gate may not hold when two unexpected factors compound at low level. Decisions are not monuments — they are working hypotheses, valid until superseded by better information.
COMP-09 asks you to make decisions and review them. These are not sequential steps — they run in parallel. The moment a decision is made, the review clock starts. Every new piece of information is a prompt to test whether that decision still holds.
The Two Categories of Decision
Not all decisions are created equal, and treating them as if they are is a source of significant error. The critical distinction is time. Some decisions can afford structured analysis. Others cannot. The mistake is applying the same process to both — either rushing a decision that deserved more analysis, or running a full diagnostic when the situation demands immediate action.
Understanding which type you're dealing with, and adjusting your process accordingly, is itself a core skill within this behaviour.
Non-Time Critical: TDODAR
When time is not immediately constraining, structure is your most valuable tool. TDODAR provides that structure — a framework for moving from situation to decision in a way that is deliberate, collaborative, and auditable. Different operators use different acronyms, but the underlying logic is consistent across all of them: understand before you act, develop options before you commit, and review after you decide.
The R in TDODAR is the most important letter in this context, and the one most frequently treated as a formality. Review is not a debrief that happens after landing. It is an active, ongoing check: is the decision we made still the right one? Has anything changed that should change our course of action? The review is where adaptability lives.
Time Critical: Manufacture the Time
When a situation presents as time-critical, the first move is rarely to make an immediate decision. It is to convert the situation into a non-time-critical one. This is not delay — it is operational intelligence. Slowing down buys you time. Requesting radar vectors buys you time. Entering a hold buys you time. These are not admissions of difficulty; they are deliberate actions that restore the conditions in which better decisions are made.
The instinct to act immediately under pressure is strong and often counterproductive. The crew that manufactures thirty seconds of structured thinking before committing to a course of action will almost always outperform the crew that reacts in the first five. Speed of execution matters after the decision. Speed of decision rarely improves its quality.
"Slowing down, requesting radar vectors, entering a hold — these are not admissions of difficulty. They are deliberate actions that restore the conditions in which better decisions are made."
Two Tools Worth Having
Contingency Planning
The most effective decision-making support happens before the decision is needed. At the briefing stage — or following any significant change in circumstances — the question to ask is: what if? What if the weather at destination is below limits? What if we have an abnormal at a sensitive point in the approach? What if one of our planned options disappears?
Contingency planning does not eliminate the need for in-flight decision-making. It ensures that when decisions are required, some of the diagnostic work has already been done. The crew who has pre-discussed their decision criteria is not starting from scratch when the situation develops — they are working from a shared mental model that has already been stress-tested.
BRAN
When you find yourself weighing competing options — particularly in abnormal or emergency situations — BRAN provides a fast, structured way to evaluate each one against what matters.
Knowledge and the Confidence to Decide
There is a direct relationship between technical knowledge and decision-making quality that is often underestimated. A pilot who knows their aircraft limitations, their company procedures, and their legal framework does not just make better-informed decisions — they make decisions more confidently and more quickly. The cognitive overhead of uncertainty about what the manuals say, or what the options are, sits squarely on top of the already significant cognitive load of an abnormal situation.
Knowing where to find information is almost as valuable as having it. A Captain who knows exactly which checklist section to turn to, exactly which performance table applies, exactly which authority needs to be contacted — that pilot is not disadvantaged by not having memorised every detail. They have invested in the infrastructure that supports good decisions under pressure.
When There Is No Time Left
Despite every effort to manufacture time, to plan contingencies, and to apply structured process, there will be moments when none of this is available — when the situation requires an immediate response and there is no space for analysis. For those moments, only one thing is genuinely useful: the depth of the practice that preceded them.
Good decision-making under acute time pressure is not a separate skill from good decision-making in normal operations. It is the same skill, expressed at speed, by a mind that has built the right patterns across hundreds of ordinary sectors. The pilot who applies structured decision-making discipline during routine operations — who uses TDODAR on a diversion decision that could have been made on gut feel, who asks BRAN questions when reviewing a minor contingency — is not being pedantic. They are building the neural pathways that activate automatically when there is no time to think.
Normal operations are the training ground. The decisions made there are practice for the decisions that cannot afford to be wrong.