In short: This sample from Rod Machado’s Human Factors for Pilots audiobook explains why the brain’s limited working memory makes cockpit multitasking a myth, and why making safety personal helps you resist pressure to fly when you shouldn’t. Rod closes with the first of his five risk-management questions: who do you fly for?
Video: “Human Factors for Pilots Audiobook” by Rod Machado, from his YouTube channel.
What you’ll learn
- Why working memory holds only about seven distinct items at once
- Why Rod calls multitasking a myth and what that means in a glass cockpit
- The lesson Rod draws from Mathis and James Bond in Casino Royale
- Why Rod always does his own preflight, even on a flight review
- How asking who you fly for can counter outside pressure to go
Limited bandwidth
Rod starts with something every glass cockpit pilot has felt: information overload. He jokes that we all received the same Stone Age starter brain, one whose working memory has not grown much over the ages. He cites psychologist George Miller’s well-known finding that people can hold about seven distinct items in mind at once, and an argument from the book The User Illusion that this reflects the narrow bandwidth of conscious thought.
The practical point is that you cannot give full attention to copying a clearance while also studying weather radar returns. Each task alone can exceed what working memory can hold. That is why Rod says multitasking, at least in the sense of focusing on two demanding things at once, is closer to an urban myth than a pilot skill.
Making safety personal
Rod then turns to Casino Royale, where Bond’s colleague Mathis tells a doubting Bond to fight for the people he cares about rather than for abstract principles. Rod sees a pilot lesson there. He describes a flight review with a very experienced pilot who said the preflight was already done; Rod looked the airplane over anyway, and the pilot took offense. For Rod, verifying airworthiness is personal. It is how he protects himself and his passengers.
Who do you fly for?
The excerpt ends with the first of five questions Rod uses to manage risk. He recounts a mountaineer who, asked why he turned back in conditions others climbed in, said he climbs for himself, not for other people. Pilots face similar pressures: expectations from others, the money and time invested in an airplane, and the feeling that a pilot should always go. Remembering that you fly for yourself, within the limits of your skills and equipment, helps you make rational choices instead of scripted ones.
According to the description, the full audiobook contains 46 lessons and about six hours of Rod’s narration on how the aviation brain works and sometimes fails.
Go deeper with Rod Machado
This video is a sample of Rod’s audiobook, which covers decision making, attention, and the mental traps behind many pilot errors. Learn more in Human Factors for Pilots (Audiobook).
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