Naval aviation is an unusually stressful career because of the inherent demands of the work. Stress is recognized as a cause of mishaps which involve pilot error. A questionnaire was adapted from Rahe and Homes' list of stressful life events in order to determine the relationship between pilot behavioral, personality, and life change factors on the one hand and responsibility for accidents on the other. A number of factors regarding interpersonal relationships, changes in personal behavior, personality factors, and life changes were found to discriminate between pilots who were and were not at fault in accidents

Alkov, Robert A.

English

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N88-23376
CHRONIC STRESS AS A FACTOR IN AIRCRAFT MISHAPS
Robert A. Alkov
Naval Safety Center
NAS Norfolk, VA
Thirty four years ago, when I started Navy flight training, there was
no such thing as pilot stress. The macho thing was that stress didn't
bother you. Stress was for sissies. We were told by our flight surgeons
that aviators compartmentalize their stress, keeping marital problems at
home, office problems at the office, etc. In fact we were selected, in
part, because of this talent. Unfortunately, this leads to the selection of
individuals who are not very introspective, and not very aware of what's
actually happening to them, physiologically.
In the late 1960s, I worked for a Navy flight surgeon at the Naval
Aviation Safety Center, Captain Frank Austin. Frank recently resigned
as Federal Air Surgeon. During the Vietnam war, in 1966, he took
part in a study, (ref. I) conducted by Drs. James Roman, Walt Jones and
Harry Older of NASA, of the stress of combat on Navy pilots. They took a
number of physiological measures of pilot stress - heart rate, respiration
and so on. They actually instrumented aircraft so that they could tape
these responses in flight. After a flight, they also did chemical analyses
of blood, urine samples and so on. What they found was that while these
individuals were over the target with SAMS (surface to air missiles) being
_:_=u at them, their stress levels went up ,pretty high as one would expect
But when they got back to the carrier just before landing, they went right
off the scale on these measures of stress. There is no stress like landing
on an aircraft carrier, especially at night - not even being shot at by the
enemy. But, the pilots were able to handle this type of acute stress better
than the average person.
Naval aviators pride themselves on being at the "tip of the spear," of
U. S. policy. Unlike the other services, they have to be ready and in
place, near the battle zone, with their aircraft loaded wit|: ammunition
ready for trouble at any time. This means that they're in a constant state
of readiness. They don't really feel they have time to talk about things
like stress.
When you start looking at what these Navy personnel are doing, you
can't really question that they are under conditions that produce chronic
stress because we are talking about long family separations and severe
living conditions. If any of you have ever bee:: aboard an aircraft carrier
you know what I am talking about. You are working in an environment of
noise, temperature extremes, and vibration. There's really no rest. As
for sleep, in many cases during the Vietnam war, "hot bunking" was prac-
ticed. Since there are accommodations for a fixed number of sailors, but
more people than that were required to do the job, bunk sharing had to be
employed. When a sailor was on duty and out of the bunk, his buddy was
sleeping in it. He really had no place to go where he could relax. On
board an aircraft carrier you are working, or you are sleeping, or you are
eating a meal. Usually the meals are on-the-fly affairs, 15 minutes at the
most. There's not a whole lot of rest. Work days are often 18 hours or
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more. Theseconditions are conducive to chronic fatigue and stress in
maintenance and aircraft handling deck crews.
A naval aviator's main duty is not just flying. He also has collateral
duties. There is limited space aboard ship to put personnel, so every
officer has to double up on jobs. In addition to being a pilot he also may
be a maintenanceofficer, or an operations officer, or a training officer,
or a safety officer. Hemayget so boggeddownin his paper work that
there's just no time to think about flying or to study flight manualswhile
at sea. There's a lot of uncertainty in the kinds of operations that may be
assigned whena carrier air group is tasked to react to somekind of
external threat. They maybe at the point of returning homefrom a long sea
period, whenthey're suddenly turned around and sent back. This seriously
affects their family life. They find themselves involved in "blue water
operations". That is, they are so far from land that, if anything happens,
they can't go back and land somewhereon a land base. (At least not on
friendly territory where you have prior arrangements to land.) So if
anything happensand they can't get aboard the aircraft carrier they have to
ditch at sea or eject from their jets. Manynaval aircraft mishaps
involve aircraft that take off and are never heard from again. Unfortun-
ately, these mishaps can't be investigated to determine causes and correct
them.
Also, there exists the potential for chronic stress that is caused by
the heavy responsibility that's put on junior officers. The Navy utilizes
independent duty detachmentswith fairly junior officers, especially in the
helicopter community. They might be placed aboard a ship at sea that is not
an aviation ship. It just has a very small platform built on the stern.
Many times the comnandingofficers of these ships have no aviation back-
ground. Theymaywant a crew to fly over and pick up somevitally needed
supplies or take a woundedor sick manback to shore. It'll be a dark
night, in freezing weather, and the deck will be rolling and pitching. A
junior officer has a lot of pressure put on him to complete these kinds of
missions. The samething happens to Coast Guardaviators who are tasked
with missions to rescue people under similar conditions.
The rotary wing communityhas been largely neglected when it comesto
safety. Historically, the emphasis in humanengineering design for safety
has been on the more expensive fighter and attack aircraft. The individuals
who are out there in small helicopter detachments, hovering over a very
slippery deck at night in rough weather, have been overlooked.
But naval aviators are stress copers. They thrive on it. They're
selected for this. In fact, they are stress seekers. You could call them
type A personalities, people who have to be under pressure to really do good
work. However,each has his own personal limitations. Stress coping is
subject to individual differences. If you drew a curve showing their stress
coping behavior, it would be a bell shapedcurve. But, that curve would
represent higher overall stress coping ability than that of the normal
population. Wemaythink that an individual aviator is doing well compared
to the general population but we would have to comparehim to the norm for
his group to say he is coping well. Thosewho do not cope well represent a
small percentage of our aviators, however.
iO0
Wefind that people who do not cope well with stress tend to fall into
two categories. First there is the younger and the less experienced,
immature individual as you would expect. These represent a substantial
portion of the sailors who manthe flight decks and do maintenance on the
aircraft. Secondly, the type A personality frequently has trouble coping
with stress. This description would fit a lot of our junior aviators.
These two groups do not handle stress well.
I got into stress coping research because there was not widespread
recognition in the Navy of stress as a mishap cause factor. Even Navy
flight surgeons whoare trained to do the humanfactors analysis on aircraft
accidents were not recognizing stress whenit wasa factor in a mishap.
Several years ago this was demonstrated during the investigation of an
accident that involved an aircraft commandertaking off in a transport
aircraft who had an engine quit. The copilot, using good crew coordination
procedures, tried to feather the bad engine. The aircraft commandereached
up and knocked his copilot's hand away from the engine feather button, then
proceeded to feather the good engine. They ditched into the sea and got out
alive, but they lost a couple of passengers who drowned. The flight surgeon
had written up his report declaring that there were no known psychological
or sociological factors in the mishap. The Naval Safety Center's aircraft
accident investigation team was sent to investigate. One of the team was in
the officer's club bar at the base where the accident occurred, lle started
asking some questions and found out that the pilot was in the bar the night
of the mishap. He finally had to leave when the bar closed at one a.m. He
had an early flight at six a.m. and he had been drinking heavily. The
reason for this was his wife had called him from the United S' _tes Lo tell
him she was leaving with another man. This was the culmination of months of
marital discord. Apparently everybody knew about it in his squadron. They
just closed ranks and were tight-lipped about it during the investigation,
to protect their buddy.
About that time I began talking with Captain RichaLd a_,e,__- a p=y..........u4 "-
trist at the Naval IIealth Research Center in San Diego. He's now retired
and teaching at the University of Nevada Medical School in Reno. I asked
him if the life changes scale that he had determined was associated with
health changes could also have some correlation with behavioral changes.
Some of these health changes include accidental injuries. Certainly if
life changes had such a profound effect on health there surely must be some
effect on skilled performance. IIowever, since his interest was only on
health changes, Dr. Rahe encouraged me to investigate a relationship, if
any, between life events and accidents.
You probably recall the study in which Dr. Rahe collaborated with Dr.
Thomas Holmes of the University of Seattle. They had a large number of
faculty members rank-order various life changes as to how much stress coping
they felt would be required by each. They arbitrarily assigned the death of
a spouse (the one that everyone agreed required the most stress coping) I00
points using an ordinal scale. Thus divorce was assigned 73 points and so
on. In the Navy study, Captain Rahe added the cumulative points for people
who reported these kinds of events within a year prior to going on a cruise
on U.S. Navy ships from San Diego. There were over 2,000 men involved in
this study. They weren't told why they were being asked these questions.
During their cruise, of those who had accumulated between 150 to 200 points,
101
about a third reported to the sick bay with somekind of illness. If they
had between200 and 300 points, over half reported ill during the cruise.
Of those with over 300 points almost 80%reported ill or with somekind of
accidental injury (ref. 2).
Even though ordinal scales are not additive, they did demonstrate a
relationship betweencumulative life events and health changes. So I
devised a questionnaire of my own. I found that a lot of these life change
factors didn't work for mein discriminating aviators who had pilot factor
mishaps (ref. 3). Again, there were too manyindividual differences, so I
started looking beyond life changes to such things as stress coping. The
questionnaire I used asked about pilot judgment and life difficulties as
well as certain personality characteristics (ref. 4).
My questionnaire was adapted from Drs. Raheand Holmes's list of life
events, plus somebiographical information and data on aviator performance.
It was sent to flight surgeons whowere on aircraft mishap boards. They
were instructed to complete the questionnaire for the involved aviators. By
talking to his family and friends, his superiors in the squadron, his peers,
etc., the flight surgeon could get the answers without showing the aviator
the questionnaire. Many times the pilot was deceased, so the information
had to be obtained from the family. The pilot never saw the questionnaire, only
the flight surgeon did. Unfortunately, it was an ex-post-facto study. This
has led to a great deal of criticism of the study. At the time a mishap
occurs we don't always know exactly what happenedso we have an investi-
gation. By the time the causal factors are determined, a year might have
elapsed. But whenthe investigation was finished the questionnaire respon-
ses were divided into two groups. Over 700 of these questionnaires were
completed. Theywere roughly divided into half between those with a pilot
error factor assigned and those who had no role to play in the cause of the
mishap. (Roughly half of major Navy aircraft accidents are determined to be
caused by pilot error.) Those that were assigned pilot error by the
aircraft mishapboards were comparedwith those who had no fault in the
mishap.
The results are shownin table i. Several of the factors are related
to having problems with interpersonal relationships, i. e., having problems
with peers, problemswith superiors, etc. (ref. 5). I have recently
collected data from people who have not been involved in a mishap by asking
the flight surgeon to use the samequestionnaire on an individual in the
squadron who's the samerank and roughly the sameexperience as the mishap-
involved aviator. I have not published these results yet, but I can say
that those people who have not been involved in a mishap are not statistica-
lly different from the group that were not at fault in the mishaps they were
involved in. Both of these groups are statistically different from the at
fault group in certain areas in the samedirection as the previous studies.
The study identified someof the symptomsof inadequate stress coping
that are associated with a pilot factor aircraft mishap. These include
difficulties with interpersonal relationships (i.e. peer troubles and
problems with authority figures). The mishap itself is also a symptomof
inadequate stress coping. Whenan individual is not coping, he mayturn his
frustrations inward and becomeself destructive or he may "act out",taking
out his feelings on others or on objects around him. The aggressive
102
I, I ! :
_ersonality characteristics exhibited by most aviators lend themselves to
acting out". My results demonstrated that "acting out" behavior was
present in the at fault mishap pilots at the time of the mishap (ref. 5).
Sloan and Cooper in Great Britain attempted a study to determine if my
results were applicable to British airline pilots (ref. 6). They sent my
questionnaire to mature airline captains (average age in their late forties)
and asked them which characteristics they thought would be important in
identifying accident prone pilots. "Acting out" symptoms were not among
them. Since their methodology was so completely unrelated to mine, I find
the results are not comparable. My subject population consisted of young
(average age 29 years) aviators who had been involved in aircraft mishaps.
They never saw a questionnaire. The data were collected by flight surgeons
trained to investigate by asking questions of supervisors, family, friends
and fellow aviators. Sloan and Cooper's subjects, on the other hand, were
asked to make a subjective evaluation.
What would I recommend? I think that in spite of the fact that this
study was of military aviators, a highly select group, there are still a lot
of lessons to be learned for general and commercial aviation. I'd like to
list for you some characteristics of what I feel are successful stress
copers. These people have a higher degree of self-awareness and feelings of
self-worth. They believe they can influence events or even change them.
Change is seen as a challenge and an opportunity, rather than a threat. As
for recor_T,endations for coping with stress, I believe the traditional
methods aviators employ, which usually involve alcohol consumption, are
counterproductive, causing more problems than they alleviate. Instead rest,
exercise and a proper diet should be encouraged. In other words, physical
fitness is a better strategy for stress coping.
Also recommended is time management, the prioritization of life goals,
more self awareness, stress avoidance and counseling by a flight surgeon or
chaplain if needed. The idea that only sissies are affected by stress must
be put to rest. The subtle and insidious effects of stress on pilot perform-
ance must be emphasized in pilot training programs. Stress and fatigue are
hazards that must be dealt with in aviation to ensure safe flight opera-
tions.
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REFERENCES
I. Roman,J., Older, H., and W. L. Jones, J_.; Medical Monitoring of Navy
Carrier Pilots in Combat. Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine,
vol. 38, February, 1967, pp. 133-139.
2. Rahe, R. H.: Life Crisis and Health Change. Naval Medical Neuropsychi-
atric ResearchUnit Report No. 67-4, 1967.
3. Alkov, R. A., and M. S. Borowsky: A Questionnnaire Study of Psychologi-
cal BackgroundFactors in U.S. Naval Aircraft Accidents. Aviation, Space,
and Environmental Medicine, vol. 51, September, 1980, pp. 860-863.
4. Alkov, R. A., Borowsky, M. S., and J. A. Gaynor: Stress Coping and the
U. S. NavyAircrew Factor Mishap. Aviation, Space, and Environmental
Medicine, vol. 53, November,1982, pp.ii12-1115.
5. Alkov, R. A., Gaynor, J. A., and M. S. Borowsky: Pilot Error as a
Symptomof Inadequate Stress Coping. Aviation, Space, and Environmental
Medicine, vol. 56, March, 1985, pp. 244-247.
6. Sloan, S. J., and C. L. Cooper: The Impact of Life Events on Pilots: An
Extension of Alkov's Approach. Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine,
vol. 56, October, 1985, pp. 1000-1003.
104
Table I. Factors which discriminated betweenpilots who were at fault in
an aircraft mishap and those who were not at fault using the Fisher-Irwin
Exact Test (one-tailed). (N=737)
Factor At Fault Not at fault Critical
(n=381) (n=356) Level(l sided)
Poor leader 43 21 0.0065**
Lacks maturity and 20 9 0.0425*
stability
Financial problems 14 5 0.0418"
Recent marital engagement 17 5 0.0118"
Recent major career 77 36
decision
Difficulty with inter-
personal relationships
Trouble with superiors
0.0001"*
26 13 0.03858*
27 5 0.0001"*
Trouble with peers 19 7 0.0203*
Recent personality change 13 4 0.0304
Excessive alcohol use or
recently changed intake
8 0 0.0047"*
No sense of own 26 ii
limitations
Incapable of quickly
assessing potential troublesome
situations
0.0131"
31 6 O. 0000"*
*p<O.05 **p<O.Ol
105


Chronic stress as a factor in aircraft mishaps

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