what is airmanship

The term "Airmanship" refers to a quality inherent in the profession of a pilot that is difficult to translate with a single word. It encompasses the entire set of skills a pilot possesses to master the complexity of the phenomenon of flight. It includes various forms of knowledge, ranging from the understanding of aerodynamics and engine structures, adherence to operational procedures, awareness of one's responsibilities, the assimilation of human factors concepts, to an understanding of the external environment.

It includes both technical and non-technical knowledge, such as leadership, followership, situational awareness, decision-making, conflict resolution, critical thinking, and the many facets of communication.

The belief that Standard Operating Procedures and increasingly advanced automation are sufficient to ensure safety has, in recent years, proven to be what it truly is: an illusion.

There is no aircraft today capable of flying on its own with the same level of safety as one piloted by two professionals. This is due to the fact that artificial intelligence, as it currently stands, cannot handle the complexity experienced during a routine flight anywhere in the world.

Every day, pilots make small adjustments in the execution of procedures in order to achieve the main goal: a safe landing at the destination. However, these adjustments leave no trace. Simply put, the work as imagined and the work actually performed do not coincide—and often, without even realizing it, pilots bridge that gap to achieve the final outcome.

The ability to perceive even weak signals, anticipate events, and mitigate deviations from what is expected is part of a complex and often unconscious understanding of the system as a whole, which is applied daily without any outward sign or documentation.

Take, for instance, an approach to an international airport in bad weather. This is a fairly routine situation. We’re not talking about handling emergencies or applying complex procedures for serious malfunctions—just routine, where two healthy and rested pilots are conducting an approach amid cumulonimbus clouds and/or strong winds. First, the approach must be planned by choosing a strategy that allows the crew to avoid flying into a thunderstorm. This means altering the course of action previously filed in the flight plan.

Do we descend earlier? Or do we wait and overfly the storm area before increasing the descent rate? Should we divert to the east to avoid lightning, or to the west to stay upwind and minimize turbulence? Does the fuel onboard allow us to do any of this? Do we wait for weather improvement or start the approach now? And if we go for landing, what happens if we have to execute a go-around due to wind exceeding limits? Is the alternate airport operational? Are other aircraft diverting there, possibly filling up the parking stands and making it impossible to accommodate more aircraft? Do we have ground staff who can assist passengers and bus them to the original destination? Are the maximum duty times compatible with the continuation of the flight duty? Or should we inform the company to activate a standby crew to complete the rotation?

A thousand more questions could emerge in a moderately complex situation—let alone during a serious emergency. And yet, none of this brainstorming is ever written down. There's no record of the mental pathways a pilot follows to handle various in-flight situations. Artificial intelligence requires these reasoning models, but such models do not exist in the literature.

Flight crew are, by nature, nomadic—they talk, but they don’t write. They share experiences over coffee, or during informal gatherings. If there is no cause to file an ASR (Air Safety Report), they simply keep their experience to themselves and don’t share it publicly.

This situation has led regulatory bodies to believe that what is written in regulations is what actually happens onboard. Relax: that’s not the case. Take it from someone who flies.

In conclusion, a Commander cannot explain what airmanship is in just a few words to someone who doesn’t fly. There exists what Michael Polanyi called “tacit knowledge”—the unspoken, lived experience shared within a professional community that requires only a few words to be understood. But only within that community.