How lack of situation awareness is involved in learning difficulties of ab-initio helicopter pilots?

Flight instruction for ab initio helicopter pilots is crucial for the development of basic flight skills to ensure the safety during flight. Instruction relies on accurately assessing the learning progress of student pilots, enabling appropriate guidance for skill acquisition. However, for some students, instructors find it challenging to determine the origin of their learning difficulties. Situation Awareness (SA) is a core determinant in decision-making quality and is defined by Endsley as “perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future”. Therefore, assessing SA in student pilots could provide insight into the nature of their cognitive and perceptual processes, and thus, facilitating the understanding of learning difficulties. Our study aimed to determine whether lack of SA is involved in the learning difficulties of helicopter military student pilots and how. The method consisted of a content analysis of evaluation forms completed by flight instructors after 6 flights in the navigation module for 20 military helicopter student pilots. Each comment written by flight instructors were classified according to five variables. Data analysis is currently in progress and aims at comparing learning successes and difficulties between student pilots who validated the navigation module and those who did not validate the module. Results will be presented at the conference.