Hazardous attitudes and human factors

You will meet this moment on a busy launch. The wind is a little stronger than you like, three pilots have just taken off, and someone behind you says, “You’re fine, go.” Your skills have not changed in the last minute. Your thinking has.

Human factors is the study of how your attitudes, feelings and body shape your decisions. Accidents rarely come from one big error; they usually grow from small factors piling up¹.

Five hazardous attitudes

Studies of pilots’ decisions have found five hazardous attitudes, ways of thinking that undermine good judgement. The FAA pairs each with an antidote, a short sentence you say to yourself. The BHPA’s optional Pilot Foundation syllabus, which guides new Club Pilots through their first hours, asks for awareness of them too²³.

Figure: The five hazardous attitudes, what each sounds like in your head, and its antidote. The bottom row is the method: recognise the thought, label it, say the antidote.

On a hill they sound like this:

• Anti-authority: “The site rules are written for beginners.”
• Impulsivity: “Quick, launch before this cycle dies.”
• Invulnerability: “Open leg straps happen to careless pilots.”
• Macho: “Everyone’s watching. I’ll show them I can launch in this.”
• Resignation: “I’m too low for the field, so it doesn’t matter what I do.”

The method doesn’t ask you to become a different person. Notice the thought, label it (“that’s impulsivity”), then replace it with the antidote you memorised².

Peer pressure and get-there-itis

The FAA lists peer pressure (deciding by your feelings about the group rather than by the conditions) and get-there-itis (sticking to the plan with no alternative considered) among the classic traps. It calls managing outside pressure the single most important key to managing risk⁴.

Pressure comes in many forms. Swiss accident reports describe pilots drawn onto strong thermal days by club chat groups, cross-country league tables and thermal apps, and pilots who felt pushed by spectators on launch⁴. After a long winter, the urge to fly on any half-suitable day can override a pilot’s own safety thresholds⁵.

Pilots have informal names for these traps; neither is an FAA term. “Launch fever” is the rush in a launch queue: the cycle is good, the pilot ahead has gone, and stopping feels impossible. It is peer pressure and get-there-itis together, often with some impulsivity. “Summit fever” is get-there-itis on a hike-and-fly: you walked up all morning, so you must fly down. Either way, the effort is spent whether you fly or not, and it says nothing about today’s air.

The defences work best when you choose them in advance:

• Set your personal minimums before you leave home. You may tighten them on the day, never loosen them⁶; see Go/no-go and personal minimums.
• Count the marginal items. The FAA’s rule of thumb is that if two or more areas are marginal, for example both you and the weather, you don’t go¹.
• Step out of the queue. Sit apart, watch the wind, the clouds and the pilots in the air, and remember there will be many better days⁷.

Target fixation

Pilots tend to fly towards whatever they stare at. In the German federation’s 2024 data, fixating on an obstacle caused three collisions on the approach, and the only US paragliding death of 1999 was a pilot who fixated on a narrow waterway and landed in it⁸. Chasing a spot landing does the same: poor decisions made to hit a target are a recognised accident factor⁹.

You can feel target fixation happen. The obstacle in the landing field (LZ) seems to grow and hold your eyes, and your hands follow your eyes. The fix is deliberate: choose where you want to go, look at that safe place, and keep steering towards it⁹.

Fixation works on problems too. After a collapse or a line knot, many pilots stare at the wing and miss it turning back towards the hill. Fly the wing first: stop the turn, look where you are going and get away from the ground, then deal with the cause¹⁰.

Normalisation of deviance

Normalisation of deviance is the slow acceptance of lower standards as normal, often because nothing went wrong last time¹¹. Nobody decides to fly carelessly. The check gets a little shorter, the wind you accept a little stronger, the slope a little closer, and each time it works.

Accident reports are full of it: experienced pilots thinking “it will work out, it always has”; a pilot whose 600 h without incident on a high-performance wing built a false confidence before a crash in the lee; pilots trusting modern wings’ collapse resistance in turbulence they would once have avoided. Every wing collapses eventually¹¹.

Two defences help. Write your standards down and compare today with them, not with last time. And ask a coach or instructor to watch you now and then. “Nothing happened” means you were lucky or good that day; it doesn’t prove the shortcut is safe.

Fatigue and stress

Your body is part of every decision. Fatigue builds during a flying day: carrying the wing back up, repeated failed launches, a day in the sun. Investigators have named it in fatal accidents, including a pilot in 2024 who told friends they were exhausted and would not fly, and then flew¹².

Bring water and food and use them; training sites are often far from facilities¹³. Take breaks before you feel you need them, and treat the last flight of a long day with suspicion. Your daily IMSAFE self-check is in Go/no-go and personal minimums.

How stress bends decisions

Stress narrows your attention. A highly stressed pilot can literally fail to hear a radio call such as “throw your reserve”¹², and Swiss landing-accident reports list mental blocks among the causes¹⁴. And deciding takes time: making the decision is one of the slowest parts of throwing a reserve¹⁵.

So make the hard decisions before you need them. A rehearsed rule, such as the Swiss federation’s “out of control: reserve out”, works when thinking doesn’t¹⁶. See Priorities and the reserve.