Applicability of System Safety Processes and Operational Risk Management Training for Future Pilots

System safety is taught as a discipline in some aeronautical programs. Such a course maybe designed to prepare career-minded aviation students with a solid background to face the technical intricacies of the commercial flight arena. Over the course of the past decade, the complexity of large modern transport category aircraft has grown, and along with that growth the command and control functions built into the avionics and flight control systems have become automatic. Most new pilots entering into the cockpits of these aircraft require an understanding of how to manage these new systems in light of the basic design principles used. One excellent method of providing education for students in aeronautical studies is through courses in system safety and operational risk management (ORM). The advantage of doing this is to provide an aircrew member sufficient understanding of the logic processes and analysis inherent in system safety to permit him to quickly learn how to handle issues and emergencies that arise in the actual operation of the aircraft. This paper brings to the forefront one methodology in which system safety training is fundamentally helpful for aircrew piloting complex systems.