Background

This Briefing Note (BN) discusses on how to improve flight crew monitoring skills. It is important for every pilot to understand what is “monitoring” because it is an essential personal quality that can influence safety and because each of its elements is vital to safe and efficient aviation operations.

Unfortunately, there is an abundance of evidence showing that inadequate flight crew monitoring is a significant problem in the air transport industry.

Why the emphasis? First, the industry hadn't made monitoring a primary task. Second, we just assume that monitoring is easy, while, in truth, it's not.

Introduction

One of the most important aspects of a safe flight operation is the requirement for crewmembers to carefully monitor the aircraft's flight path and systems, as well as actively cross-check each other's actions.