BRIEFING IN DISORDER

I still remember my first flight in an old B737-200, No FMGC (FMS), no EFIS and just those old clock looking instruments; A perfect knowledge of the taxi routes, Instrument Departures (SID), en-route airways, Arrivals (STAR) and Approaches was extremely essential and the briefing was an important part to remember all this (due to the lack of FMGC) and to be sure both pilots where in the same channel.

In my mind an effective briefing needed to be in “flight chronological order”, in a kind of story telling or rehearsing for a play that we were going to perform a few minutes later. And I wasn’t wrong...

In June 2004 Airbus published a document called “Briefing Notes - Conducting Effective Briefings” in which it was mentioned briefings needed to be “structured (follow a logical sequence)”, anyway by that time there wasn’t any good example in the Manuals like the one we have now in the Airbus FCTM (PR-NP-SOP-60)

Years before that, a bad habit started spreading within Airbus (A320 specifically) pilots and their briefings.

THE BAD BRIEFING HABIT 

- Brief in the same order in which you prepared the FMGC - 

Said my instructor during my first flight in the A320 in 2005.... and he was totally wrong

FMGC preparation sequence

While I was briefing I started feeling there wasn’t any logical order in what I was saying since following the famous “D-I-F-S-R-I-P” I used to prepare mi MCDU was making me brief the SID before even talk about what we were going to do before, such as which parking bay we were, the engine start, taxi, takeoff weight, takeoff runway, configuration and speeds; there was no CHRONOLOGICAL order like the one I used while briefing in the old B737-200 or even like the one I used in the Cessna 150 during my initial flight training. Some other instructors told me the same, or even to brief using the famous “top hat” sequence I use to prepare my FMGC for approach 

The “Top Hat”

Now days, after a decade of having well structured briefings in our FCTM there still are pilots around “briefing in disorder”. 

A good briefing is part of our CRM and it has been proved that our brain can remember all items better if we brief in the same order in which events are going to happen, we’ll be able to imagine or have a good picture of the whole phase if we brief in chronological order just as the sequence indicated in our FCTM.

Briefing without order is one of the items on my “Top 20 A320 pilots bad habits” list which I’ll slowly be releasing article by article.

Hope this info is useful for you!

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Happy Landings!