3 ms·
Human consciousness tries to form a coherent model that integrates current sensory perception with knowledge. During an approach at night, scarce sensory input
by lolc 8y ago
Human consciousness tries to form a coherent model that integrates current sensory perception with knowledge. During an approach at night, scarce sensory input is interpolated to form a full model by the brain. The report uses the term "expectation bias" for this phenomenon. This drive for coherence runs below consciousness and we only notice when the coherence falls apart: When our sensory input cannot be reconciled anymore with the current model. We blink, shift our head, and our model rebuilds anew.
What happened here is that the pilots were locked into a wrong model: In an environment with very little light there is no visual source to compare taxiway lighting against. If we know from experience that a light is white, our brain will use this to calibrate. Without this ever becoming a conscious thought. Color correction happens automatically for us and we don't feel it. This process can easily lead to nominally weird things like blue lights being percieved as white.
Fatigue and stress would contribute to ward off looming decoherence such as "why are the lights on 28L redder than on 28R?" When under pressure, we go with the strongest signal. And that signal may very well come from our knowledge, not our perception.
- cmurf 8y agoI've never experience blue taxiway lights being confused as white/runway lighting, even in the very common case of uncontrolled airport where they frequently do leave taxiway lighting on, and runway lighting off, and use pilot controlled lighting to enable the runway lights on demand. I'd expect at SFO, like any other major airport I have flown into, does have both runway and taxiway lighting enabled as pilots are on final approach. So they do have a reference: the white runway lights versus blue taxiway lights, which on final approach are in the same field of view. And even on the lowest intensity setting, runway lights are brighter than taxiway lights. Something about this particular situation definitely is off. I don't know if there's something operationally different about SFO's lighting. Or if the pilots really were that fatigued, and this is a seriously underestimated factor.
- lolc 8y agoThey expected to see two lit runways. They saw two lit lanes and their tired and distracted brain did the rest. Obviously it's a rare occurrence otherwise airport lighting would have been adjusted to avoid the mistake.
- userbinator 8y agoThis process can easily lead to nominally weird things like blue lights being percieved as white. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress