Flight Discipline – Book Review

The whole aim of this Blog is to provide free, relevant, readily accessible and easy to understand info to allow you to successfully complete your Command Upgrade. One way to do this is to point you towards books that I have reviewed and think will fit in with the aim of this place.

Well, I’ve been busy reading another of Tony Kern’s excellent books – Flight Discipline. We’ve previously discussed Tony’s model of Airmanship, which was contained in another of his books that I’ve reviewed – Redefining Airmanship.

One of the essential foundations of Airmanship is discipline and that’s just what Flight Discipline is all about.

Before you all rush out to beg, borrow, steal or buy this book and eagerly devour its’ contents – make sure you read Redefining Airmanship first!

It’s not essential of course. You could quite easily read and apply the information contained within Flight Discipline (and you would be a better pilot and Captain for it), but the book will make a little more sense, be a little more significant and relevant if you read Redefining Airmanship first.

In fact if you’re keen to purchase these books you can buy them as a boxed set Plane of Excellence: Superior Piloting Trilogy, which contains these two books together with another of Tony Kern’s books Darker shades of Blue: The Rogue Pilot.

Enough of the drivel – let’s look at the book Flight Discipline.

I thought Redefining Airmanship was the better of the two. However, having said that, Flight Discipline is an extremely good book and well worth having on your bookshelf. I guess that’s the problem when you manage to write two excellent books, everyone is bound to compare them and choose a favourite!

This is really an expansion and a more comprehensive in-depth discussion on the Discipline aspect contained within Tony Kern’s model of Airmanship.

The three Sections and the Chapters give a good indication of what you can expect in this book;

• The Problem Of Poor Discipline In Aviation



• Discipline: The foundation of Airmanship


• The costs of poor flight discipline


• The letter of the law: Regulatory discipline


• The problem with shortcuts: Procedural discipline


• Organizational issues for flight discipline

• The Anatomy Of Flight Discipline



• Personality factors and flight discipline


• Hazardous attitudes


• Peer pressure

• Practical Issues For Flight Discipline



• Guiding lights: The critical role of instructors and mentoring to flight discipline


• Communications discipline


• Automation discipline


• Disciplined attention: The next best thing to a crystal ball


• Killing conditions: Common scenarios for breakdowns of flight discipline


• Flight planning: Discipline at ground speed zero


• Chaos theory?: Structuring change in the cockpit


• Flight discipline in action


• Flight insurance: A personal program for improving flight discipline

Flight Discipline was published in 1998 so some of the references in the Automation discipline chapter and Appendix A: Automation-related aircraft accidents and incidents, seem a little dated – the exact same problem remains (no new mistakes have been invented, we just keep making the same ones!) but with the extra exposure pilots have had in the intervening decade of experience with “glass” cockpits and the increasing levels of automation, possibly would warrant a revision to incorporate more up to date examples.

As with Redefining Airmanship, this book, Flight Discipline has numerous examples of commercial, military and GA incidents, accidents and “The Right Stuff” throughout the entire book to exemplify the chapter’s topic.

Flight Discipline is at once attitude and action. It is difficult to describe but easy to recognise. It permeates everything we do as aviators, and yet is seldom discussed unless it is recognised as lacking. (Tony Kern)

If you really apply the fundamentals of real live "flight discipline" into your day-to-day flying operations you will probably discover (as I did!) that you're not as disciplined as you originally thought. You will probably find, now that you're aware of the various types of flight discipline, that you continually make small (usually insignificant) and occasionally commit large (not so insignificant) flight discipline errors. As a Command Trainee you need to display (to your Trainer) that you have the proper Command potential to successfully complete your Command Training. As the Captain everything that you do is scrutinised and assessed by your F/O and influences your F/O. You are a role model to your F/O and the rest of the crew. As such you need to practise flight discipline at all times.

You may only require a few minutes of disciplined action (e.g. in an emergency situation), but to successfully pull it off usually requires a lifetime of preparation. This book is a blue-print, a map of how you can accomplish this lofty and necessary goal of Flight Discipline.

Flight Discipline is a good companion to the previous book, Redefining Airmanship, and as a current or future Captain is well worth the effort to read, digest and incorporate the lessons and examples into your day-to-day flying operation.

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I think I should declare that I'm not involved with Amazon or Tony Kern and I don't receive anything for reviewing his books or using the Amazon links - these are just purely my personal opinions. I use the Amazon links because when you view their linked page it provides much more info and other reviews about the book so that you can make a considered decision about either expending effort to read the book, or expending dollars to buy the book.

I happen to actually think that Redefining Airmanship and Flight Discipline are really excellent books and that every professional aviator should read and apply the principles in their operation.