Features and pecularities of aviation psychology

This article addresses the various physiological factors that can degrade the mental and physical performance of pilots, and countermeasures to those factors. In a normal environment (i.e., at sea level and without any unusual forces acting upon it), the human body does a good job of acquiring and processing information. However, when placed in an environment for which it is not adapted (e.g., an airplane at altitude, with g-forces exerting loads in unusual directions), that functioning may be degraded. Functioning may also be affected by drugs such as caffeine or marijuana, nutritional state, and fatigue arising from lack of sleep, among other factors. The acquisition and processing of information may also be affected by visual illusions arising from the characteristics of the environment and by somatic illusions arising from the organs of balance. All of these are important considerations, but our discussion is about what is arguably the most important aspect of flying from a physiological standpoint – as pilot goes up, the pressure and oxygen go down.