Summary
Situational awareness is a vital yet hard-to-measure competency in aviation. Traditional training methods often rely on subjective judgement, but tools like TACET offer objective insights by tracking where pilots direct their attention during high-pressure scenarios. This data-driven approach supports evidence-based debriefs, strengthens CBTA alignment, and helps instructors identify performance trends and address skill gaps. The result is smarter training, better decision-making, and safer flight operations.
Situational awareness is one of the most critical human factors in flight operations, yet often one of the most misunderstood. We refer to it frequently, in line checks, simulator debriefs, and post-event analysis, but it remains a concept that is easier to discuss than to define, and far harder to measure with precision. At its core, situational awareness is not simply about knowing your position or monitoring the instruments. It is the ability to perceive what is happening, comprehend the implications, and anticipate what may occur next.
The Modern Challenge
In a modern flight deck, where information is spread across multiple displays and systems, maintaining situational awareness demands more than just technical knowledge. It requires the ability to prioritise inputs, manage workload, and continuously update a mental model of the aircraft’s state and operational context. The challenge isn’t access to data, but the ability to process it in real time and determine what is relevant.
Under normal conditions, experienced pilots maintain situational awareness through scan patterns, briefings, callouts, and crew cross-monitoring. But even robust routines can be disrupted. During high workload or task-saturated moments such as abnormal operations or adverse weather, the ability to maintain an accurate mental model can degrade rapidly. When that happens, pilots may become fixated on a single system, fail to detect a developing trend, or operate on outdated assumptions.
When Situational Awareness Fails
The breakdown of situational awareness is rarely obvious in the moment. It tends to emerge incrementally – through missed parameters, misinterpreted cues, or a failure to re-evaluate priorities. When these issues are not recognised and corrected quickly, the consequences can be serious.
The historical examples are well known. In the case of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, the crew became preoccupied with a landing gear indicator fault, inadvertently disconnecting the autopilot and allowing the aircraft to descend into terrain. The systems were fully functional. The failure was cognitive.
Decades later, Air France 447 presented a different scenario, but the same underlying issue. Conflicting airspeed indications led to confusion, loss of control, and ultimately a fatal stall at high altitude. Again, the aircraft remained flyable. The breakdown occurred in the flight crew’s understanding of the situation.
These events remind us that situational awareness is not guaranteed by training or experience alone. It must be continuously reinforced especially in dynamic, time-sensitive environments. And that presents a particular challenge for flight training organisations and instructors: how do you observe and assess a mental process that is internal, fluid, and often only visible after a deviation has occurred?
The Assessment Gap
Traditionally, instructors rely on experience to judge whether a pilot appears in control of the aircraft, whether trends were identified early, or whether decisions made sense within the context. This observational method is valuable but inherently subjective. It often depends on retrospective judgement. Phrases like “you appeared behind the aircraft” or “you didn’t start the descent early enough” are common in debriefs.
That’s where objective tools like TACET are beginning to make a difference.
Objective Insight into Situational Awareness
By integrating eye-tracking technology into the training environment, TACET captures visual attention data throughout a simulator session or operational scenario. This gives instructors and examiners tangible evidence of what the pilot was looking at, and for how long, during each phase of flight.
For example, in a high-stress event such as an engine failure after take-off, TACET can show whether the pilot monitored airspeed during configuration changes, whether flight mode annunciations were verified, or whether attention became fixated on ECAM messages. This makes it possible to assess whether the scan was appropriately prioritised, or whether key parameters were missed.
These insights transform the nature of the debrief. Rather than relying solely on impression-based feedback, instructors can show pilots exactly where their attention was focused during critical decision points. The discussion becomes evidence-based, using timestamped, contextualised data aligned to aircraft state, flight control inputs, and crew communication. The result is a clearer, more complete picture of crew performance.
Training for Resilience, Not Just Routine
This is especially relevant when training for resilience rather than routine. In today’s operational environment, pilots are expected to manage increasingly complex automated systems while remaining ready to revert to manual control or degraded modes. Situational awareness is central to that flexibility. TACET helps pinpoint where awareness is strong – and where it begins to deteriorate – enabling targeted remediation and more effective use of simulator time.
TACET also aligns with Competency-Based Training and Assessment (CBTA) principles. Situational awareness is not a standalone skill. It is a behavioural marker embedded across multiple competencies, including workload management, problem-solving, communication, and decision-making. TACET helps make these behaviours visible, measurable, and coachable. It allows instructors to assess not just whether a task was completed correctly, but how the pilot arrived at that decision, and what information they used, missed, or misinterpreted.
From Individual Insight to Systemic Learning
From a training management perspective, TACET reveals patterns across pilot populations. If multiple trainees are consistently missing automation mode changes during descent or struggling to prioritise navigation inputs during high workload phases, those insights can shape course design, standard operating procedures, and CRM focus areas.
TACET is not a replacement for instructor judgement, it complements that expertise. The technology delivers the data, but it is the instructor who interprets it within the operational and training context. Together, they provide deeper insight into human performance and create more meaningful opportunities for development.
A New Era in Competency Development
Situational awareness has always been one of the most important skills in aviation. But with tools like TACET, we can go beyond observation and into evidence. We can identify not just when pilots lose the picture, but how and why. That understanding is key to developing resilient, informed, and adaptive crews capable of managing the increasingly dynamic environment of modern aviation.
This isn’t just a step forward in training – it’s a shift in how we understand and develop pilot competency.
