Pilots Plan for Get-There-Itis
Aviation planning covers weather, fuel, mechanical trouble, and a predictable hazard inside the cockpit: the pilot may become less willing to change the plan as the destination gets closer.
Pilots call this get-there-itis. Psychologists call it plan continuation bias: the tendency to continue with an original plan even when new information suggests that it should change.
The Federal Aviation Administration warns that this bias can grow stronger as someone gets closer to completing an activity. The destination is nearby. Passengers expect to arrive. Diverting could mean a hotel, an alternate ride, or explaining why the trip was not completed.
Under that pressure, persistence can feel like good judgment. Each warning can be explained away as one more manageable problem.
An FAA safety briefing recounts a 2015 flight in which a Boeing 737 crew missed its first approach in poor conditions. At that point, the aircraft had enough fuel to reach either of two alternate airports. The crew instead continued trying to land at the original destination.
After the third missed approach, the more distant alternate was no longer within range. The crew flew to the remaining alternate, made three more unsuccessful approaches, and finally landed with about 15 minutes of fuel remaining.
Each additional attempt could be treated as an isolated decision: try once more, then reconsider. Meanwhile, the growing investment in reaching the destination made abandoning the plan feel increasingly like failure.
Aviation assumes pilots may not recognize this change in their own judgment while it is happening. Preparation therefore begins before the pressure exists.
Pilots identify alternate airports before takeoff. They calculate the fuel needed to reach them. They establish personal limits for weather and aircraft performance. During an approach, predefined criteria can determine whether the aircraft is stable enough to continue or whether the pilot should go around.
These preparations let a less pressured pilot establish boundaries for the later pilot who may be tired, inconvenienced, under social pressure, or almost at the destination.
Precommitment still requires a response suited to the actual conditions.
Winter driving demonstrates why. A rule such as “turn around when visibility reaches X” sounds prudent, but the road behind may be worse, shelter may be closer ahead, or stopping in place may create a different hazard.
A better plan might require reassessment before entering a long stretch without services. At that point, the driver can consider the forecast, road reports, fuel, shelter, and alternate routes before deteriorating conditions add urgency to the decision.
Planning ahead creates a deliberate moment of reassessment before commitment changes how the available evidence feels.
Get-there-itis rarely announces itself as impaired judgment. It presents as persistence, practicality, or being almost there.
Aviation treats that bias as predictable and prepares for it while judgment is still relatively unclouded. A plan for changing course becomes a message from the version of you who was not yet invested in continuing.
Reviewed and edited by John Pile.
Source
Featured image: Dreamliner 2012 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
After posting this, I started thinking about the parallels with the sunk cost fallacy.
The difference may be time and urgency. A team midway through a months-long project has the time to pause and ask whether past investment is distorting the decision to continue, where a pilot approaching a destination in worsening conditions may only have minutes to decide (while also otherwise occupied flying the plane!)
Maybe “get-there-itis” is just a more immediate version of the sunk cost fallacy. It combines the time and resources spent on the original plan with the pressure of active execution and the feeling of being “almost there”.