Introduction to Glider Flying > Introduction to Glider Flying > Factors Affecting Decision Making > Situational Awareness > Obstacles to Maintaining Situational Awareness

Fatigue, stress, and work overload can cause you to fixate on a single perceived important item rather than maintaining an overall awareness of the flight situation. A contributing factor in many accidents is a distraction that diverts the pilot’s attention from monitoring the instruments or scanning outside t h e aircraft. Many cockpit distractions begin as a minor problem, such as a gauge that is not read-ing correctly, but result in accidents as the pilot diverts attention to the perceived problem and neglects to properly control the aircraft.

Complacency presents another obstacle to main-taining situational awareness. When activities become routine, you may have a tendency to relax and not put as much effort into performance. Like fatigue, complacency reduces your effective-ness in the cockpit. However, complacency isharder to recognize than fatigue, since everything is perceived to be progressing smoothly. For example, you have been flying multiple glider rides out of an uncontrolled airport. The wind has been calm, and you have been using the same runway all day. Without thinking, you enter down-wind without taking the wind direction into account. As you make your turn to final, you real-ize that your groundspeed is extremely fast. You overshoot the runway and collide with a fence, causing extensive damage to the glider and injur-ing your passenger.