The Role of Common Sense in Aviation Safety

By Florin Necula, PhD | Accountable Manager & Licensed Aircraft Engineer
Feb 22^th, 2026

INTRODUCTION

Aviation is rightly proud of its procedures. We standardise, we document, we train, we audit and we do it because we believe standardisation is one of the strongest defences we have against error. Yet every aviation professional also knows a quieter truth: safety is not delivered by perfect records in documents alone. It is delivered by people, in real conditions, making real decisions.

That is where “common sense” enters the conversation, sometimes as praise (“he showed real common sense”), sometimes as criticism (“how could anyone not see that?”). The problem is that common sense can sound informal, even unprofessional, in an industry built on compliance. But in practice, what people call common sense is often something far more disciplined: practical judgement applied to a specific context.

This article argues that common sense – properly understood – is not a rival to regulations and procedures. It is one of the essential ways regulations and procedures are made effective at the sharp end.

WHY COMMON SENSE STILL MATTERS IN AVIATION

If our world were perfectly predictable, a procedure could cover every scenario and every combination of constraints. But operational environments are rarely that tidy: time pressure, shifting priorities, weather, staffing, MEL/CDL context, changing work scopes, handovers and the inevitable “this doesn’t look like the textbook example” moments.

In those moments, the safety outcome often depends on whether people can:

• notice weak signals early,
• ask “does this still make sense here?”, and
• pause or escalate before risk becomes irreversible.

That is common sense in its most safety-critical form: the ability to recognise when the situation has drifted away from what the procedure assumed.

WHAT “COMMON SENSE” MEANS IN A PROFESSIONAL AVIATION CONTEXT

In safety conversations, common sense is often confused with “gut feeling.” But gut feeling can be unreliable, especially under fatigue, stress or overconfidence. A more useful definition is:

Common sense = context-aware judgement that integrates procedures, experience and the current risk picture.

It includes (but is not limited to):

• situational awareness (“what is happening around me, and what is changing?”)
• practical reasoning (“what is the safest next step given this context?”)
• boundary management (“where are the limits of authority, competence, time and tolerance?”)
• healthy scepticism (“what would make this assumption wrong?”)

In other words, common sense is not the opposite of professionalism, it is often professionalism under uncertainty.

PROCEDURES, COMPLIANCE AND THE LIMITS OF RULES

Standard operating procedures, maintenance data, and quality systems exist for excellent reasons: they stabilise performance, reduce variability, and prevent avoidable mistakes. But procedures have limits:

1. Procedures are written for expected conditions. When conditions deviate (tooling constraints, unusual configurations, incomplete information, competing hazards), the procedure may not fully cover the risk picture.
2. Procedures can be followed “correctly” while the outcome is unsafe. This is not a call to improvise, it is a reminder that compliance is not the same as understanding.
3. Procedures can be used as a psychological shield. Under pressure, “I followed the steps” can become a substitute for thinking: a way to reduce personal anxiety, transfer accountability or avoid escalation.

EASA’s regulatory framework explicitly expects organisations to address human factors and human performance and to embed safety management principles in competence and training, not merely technical compliance (EASA, 2022).

The practical takeaway is simple: procedures are the baseline; judgement keeps the baseline valid in the real world.

HUMAN FACTORS: WHY COMMON SENSE CAN BE LOST

If common sense is so valuable, why does it sometimes disappear, especially in experienced teams?

Human factors research (and everyday observation) offers several mechanisms:

Normalisation of deviance

Small departures from “the ideal way” can gradually become “the normal way,” especially if nothing bad happens. Over time, the team’s internal definition of acceptable risk can drift.

Time pressure and production cues

When on-time performance, resource constraints, and workload spikes are persistent, people unconsciously adapt. The adaptation may be well-intended (“we have to keep the operation moving”), but it can also erode margins – particularly if the organisation treats deviations as individual failings rather than predictable responses to system pressure.

Fatigue and reduced cognitive bandwidth

Fatigue doesn’t just make people sleepy, it can reduce working memory, attention and the ability to detect subtle anomalies. Recent maintenance-focused research has argued for stronger fatigue risk management and more effective reporting structures specifically tailored to maintenance realities (Miller, Mrusek, & Herbic, 2023).

Automation bias and “tool over-trust”

As decision-support tools improve, the risk is not that humans become irrelevant, it is that humans become less engaged. Recent reviews of AI and advanced analytics in aviation safety repeatedly highlight the need to manage the interface between automation and human decision-making, rather than assuming technology automatically produces safer outcomes (Demir, 2024; Lopes, Aparicio, & Neves, 2024).

So, when someone says “use common sense,” it’s worth remembering: common sense is fragile. It can be weakened by system design, culture, fatigue and how we deploy technology.

COMMON SENSE ON THE LINE: WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE

In line maintenance and daily operations, common sense rarely appears as dramatic heroics. It appears as small, disciplined behaviours:

“Stop points” that prevent momentum from doing the thinking

• A technician pauses when a component fit feels “off,” even though the task is routine.
• A certifier asks for a second set of eyes because the environment (lighting, time pressure, noise) is degraded.
• A team chooses to re-check assumptions after an interruption or handover.

Asking better questions, not just giving answers

Common sense often sounds like:

• “What would make this unsafe?”
• “What are we assuming that we haven’t verified?”
• “Is the aircraft configuration exactly what the task expects?”
• “If we continue, what’s the worst credible outcome – and how would we catch it?”

Escalation as a safety skill

Professionals sometimes hesitate to escalate because escalation can feel like “creating trouble.” A mature safety culture reframes escalation as competence: the ability to recognise the boundary of safe autonomy.

Research on collaborative decision-making in pre-flight maintenance contexts emphasises that safety and efficiency depend heavily on how well teams coordinate information, timing and responsibilities, particularly across interfaces (Shmelova, Sikirda, & Syroizhka, 2025).

This aligns with what many organisations learn the hard way: common sense is not only individual. It is also collective sensemaking.

CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP: CREATING SPACE FOR JUDGEMENT

Common sense does not thrive in fear-based environments. If people believe that speaking up will be punished or that “being efficient” is always valued over “being safe,” they will adapt by becoming quiet, fast and procedural, even when the situation calls for reflection.

That is why leadership behaviours matter as much as training syllabi.

A just culture perspective helps here: organisations should encourage reporting and learning, while still drawing a clear line around unacceptable behaviours. Regulatory guidance defines just culture in terms of not punishing front-line personnel for actions or decisions commensurate with their experience and training, while not tolerating gross negligence or wilful violations (EASA, 2023).

In practical terms, leaders strengthen “common sense” when they:

• reward early escalation (especially when it delays operations)
• treat near-misses as intelligence, not embarrassment
• audit for system pressures (staffing, rostering, tooling, shift handover quality), not only for individual compliance
• model curiosity (“help me understand what made sense to you in that moment”)

CONCLUSION: COMMON SENSE AS A PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Common sense is not a license to ignore procedures. In aviation, that would be reckless. But the opposite, treating procedures as a substitute for thinking, is also unsafe.

A healthier framing is:

Procedures protect us from what we already know. Common sense protects us from what we didn’t anticipate.

In a Part-145 world, the goal is not “common sense vs compliance.” The goal is compliance plus judgement, embedded through human factors competence, operational learning and a culture where professionals are expected and supported to think.

If we want safer outcomes, we should stop using “common sense” as a vague compliment or a blunt criticism. We should treat it as what it truly is: a safety capability that can be supported, trained, protected and led.

References

Demir, G. (2024). Artificial Intelligence in Aviation Safety: Systematic Review and Biometric Analysis. International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems.

EASA. (2022). AMC & GM to Part-145 — Issue 2, Amendment 5 (includes AMC2 145.A.30(e) competence, HF training, and safety management expectations). European Union Aviation Safety Agency.

EASA. (2023). AMC & GM to the Articles of Regulations (EU) 2022/1645 and 2023/203 (includes definition of “just culture”). European Union Aviation Safety Agency.

Lopes, N. M., Aparicio, M., & Neves, F. T. (2024). Challenges and prospects of artificial intelligence in aviation: a bibliometric study. Decision Support Systems.

Miller, M., Mrusek, B., & Herbic, J. (2023). Managing Fatigue in Aviation Maintenance While Promoting a Human Factors Safety Reporting System; A Strategic Approach to Aviation Safety. Safety Management and Human Factors, 105, 54–63.

Okine, E. A., Zarei, E., Roggow, B. J., & Dehghan, N. (2025). Evolution of human factors research in aviation safety: A systematic review and bibliometric analysis of the intellectual structure.

Shmelova, T., Sikirda, Y., & Syroizhka, I. (2025). Optimization of collaborative decision-making during the aircraft pre-flight maintenance. Decision Making and Analysis, 3(1).