Situational Awareness begins with Leadership and Teamwork. It is enabled by Communication and supported by Workload Management. But its most consequential expression — the one where failure costs the most — is here: knowing, at every moment, where the aircraft is, where it is going, and what lies between it and the ground.

This is a Situational Awareness behaviour, which means it is not only about the present. Present-state awareness is the foundation. The behaviour demands more than that — it demands prediction. The pilot who knows where the aircraft is now is maintaining positional awareness. The pilot who knows where it will be in the next two minutes, what the rate of closure to terrain will be at that point, and what the options are if the picture changes — that pilot is exercising this behaviour at the level the Core Competency framework expects.

What the behaviour covers
Aircraft Trajectory
A three-dimensional understanding of the aircraft's current and predicted flight path — not just track and altitude, but energy state, rate of descent, and the consequences of the current trajectory if maintained. This applies equally in the cruise, on approach, and on the ground. Taxiing is a critical phase of flight. The trajectory of the aircraft during ground operations brings it into proximity with objects, personnel, and other aircraft at distances that require the same active awareness applied in the air.
Proximity to Terrain
Knowledge of the aircraft's position relative to Minimum Safe Altitude, terrain, and obstacles — and critically, the rate of closure to that terrain. Distance alone is not the measure. A 2,000ft separation at a sink rate of 2,000fpm gives you sixty seconds. The same separation at 500fpm gives you four minutes. The behaviour requires both dimensions to be held simultaneously.
Operational Environment
The environment the aircraft is operating within: airspace classification and restrictions, weather — including icing, turbulence, and reduced visibility — and traffic. The environment is not static background information. It directly affects aircraft performance, the options available to the crew, and the decisions that can be made. An awareness gap here cascades into decision-making errors downstream.

Why CFIT Remains a Threat

Despite GPWS and TAWS becoming standard equipment, Controlled Flight into Terrain continues to be a significant contributor to fatal accident statistics. The reason is instructive: the majority of CFIT accidents are not caused by equipment failure. They are caused by pilot error — which places them firmly within the scope of the Core Competency Matrix, and specifically within the scope of this behaviour.

The safety systems are the last line of defence. They activate when the aircraft is already in a dangerous state. The behaviour described here is the line of defence before those systems — the one that should prevent the aircraft from reaching the state that activates them. When this behaviour fails, the crew's only remaining protection is a warning system designed to catch what their situational awareness missed.

Threats from a lack of proficiency
CFIT Controlled Flight into Terrain. The aircraft is airworthy and under crew control, but the crew's positional and trajectory awareness has failed. The aircraft is flown into terrain, water, or an obstacle. This is the defining threat of this behaviour.
LOC-I Loss of Control In-Flight. Environmental awareness failures — undetected icing, unexpected turbulence, unanticipated performance degradation — can lead to loss of control. The operational environment directly affects aircraft performance, and performance affects the crew's ability to maintain the flight path.
RWY EXC Runway excursion. Trajectory awareness does not end at touchdown. A failure to maintain awareness of energy state, runway remaining, and aircraft deceleration performance during the landing roll creates the same category of threat on the ground.
COLLISION Airborne or ground-based collision. Traffic awareness is a component of operational environment awareness. The crew that has accurate awareness of other aircraft — particularly during approach and on the ground — holds a significant safety margin over one that does not.

How to Achieve Proficiency

This behaviour does not exist in isolation. Achieving proficiency requires proficiency in others — and understanding which competencies enable it is part of understanding how to develop it.

Workload Management creates the capacity

Situational awareness of trajectory and terrain requires spare cognitive capacity. A crew that is task-saturated cannot simultaneously maintain a three-dimensional picture of the aircraft's predicted path. The Workload Management behaviour of planning, preparing, prioritising, and scheduling tasks effectively is directly enabling — because it is the behaviour that generates the spare capacity from which terrain and trajectory awareness is built and maintained.

This connection runs in both directions. A crew that loses terrain awareness will rapidly find their workload increasing as they attempt to recover the picture. As workload increases, spare capacity decreases further — which degrades situational awareness more. The spiral is well-documented in accident reports.

"Being aware of the aircraft trajectory and terrain proximity should be the safety net we use before the safety systems kick in — these are the last line of defence."

The briefing is where it starts

Just as a good landing starts with an effective briefing, awareness of terrain and trajectory begins before the relevant phase of flight. Brief the terrain threat in good time. Identify exactly where the final descent will begin and how it is defined. Discuss the environment: expected weather, airspace, anticipated traffic. Agree what the triggers are for a go-around and what the missed approach procedure demands in the context of terrain.

A briefing that creates a shared mental model of the terrain and environmental picture does two things. First, it distributes the awareness across the crew — two people holding the picture is more robust than one. Second, it establishes the baseline from which deviations can be identified. A crew that has briefed the terrain threat will notice when the picture begins to diverge from what was expected. A crew that has not briefed it is starting from scratch when the deviation develops.

On non-precision approaches

2D and non-precision approaches present a disproportionate CFIT risk. The absence of vertical guidance removes one of the primary cues that alerts a crew to trajectory deviation. Briefing must identify precisely where the final descent begins, how it is defined, and what the intermediate level-off requirements are. Company SOPs — early aircraft configuration, landing configuration by the final approach fix — exist to protect spare capacity at the point of maximum terrain threat.

Leadership and Teamwork builds the shared picture

No single pilot maintains perfect terrain and trajectory awareness alone through every phase of a busy approach. The Leadership and Teamwork behaviour of creating an atmosphere of open communication and participation exists, in part, to ensure that both pilots are contributing to and updating the shared mental model. If one pilot's picture is degrading, the other's should compensate — but only if the environment makes that cross-check natural and expected rather than a sign of distrust.

The ILS Vector Scenario

The following scenario is straightforward and operational — the kind of situation that occurs routinely on every approach. It demonstrates precisely how trajectory and environmental awareness produces a different outcome to its absence.

Radar vectors to ILS — two outcomes
✓ Awareness maintained

ATC issue an intercept heading. The crew analyse the resultant track and recognise that at the current heading, localiser capture will occur after the FAF — placing the aircraft above the glideslope on intercept. They request a heading adjustment. The approach continues normally.

Awareness of the operational environment and the aircraft's trajectory identified the developing situation early. The crew intervened before it became a constraint.

✗ Awareness lost

The same heading is issued. The crew do not notice the developing geometry. Late localiser interception means capture above the glideslope. Time is spent attempting to recover the approach. Workload increases. Spare capacity falls.

The distraction causes a late landing configuration selection — at the subsequent inquiry, the crew had failed to achieve correct landing flap. The go-around had not been briefed. Stabilised approach criteria had not been established as a trigger. The approach continued despite being clearly unstable.

The landing was deep, fast, and with excess energy. The result was a runway excursion.

A single awareness failure — the trajectory geometry on the intercept heading — cascaded through workload, configuration, stabilised approach criteria, and runway performance into an accident outcome.

This scenario is not exceptional. It has occurred many times. The cascading nature of the failure — from a single trajectory awareness gap to a runway excursion — illustrates exactly why this behaviour sits within Situational Awareness rather than a more procedural competency. Procedures catch specific failures. Situational awareness prevents the conditions in which those failures develop.