Help & Reference

What is Pilot Exponent?

Pilot Exponent is a reflection tool — not a logbook for hours, but a logbook for the moments hours don't capture. Close calls, decisions that paid off, conditions that almost caught you out, even routine moments where things went well.

Every flight has these moments. Logging them builds awareness over time. Awareness reduces risk.

The app supports both error reflections AND positive-outcome reflections. Both are useful signal.

How to log an observation

Click + New Observation in the menu. The wizard walks you through 6 screens:

1. Context — title, optional location, date of event, phase of flight
2. Situation Type — what kind of moment was this?
3. Contributing Factors — what conditions were present? Select up to 3. (Picking Environmental Conditions opens a detail screen for weather specifics.)
4. Interventions — what helped you manage it? Select up to 3.
5. Assessment — Consequence and Recurrence (drives your risk rating automatically)
6. Notes — anything else worth remembering

When editing an existing observation, every screen has a green Save changes button so you can save and exit without clicking through to the end.

Phase of Flight (8 options)

• Preflight / Planning — Anything before engine start: weather check, route planning, briefings
• Taxi / Ground Operations — From engine start to lining up, or after landing
• Takeoff — From application of takeoff power to rotation
• Climb — From rotation to top of climb
• En-route / Cruise — Level flight at altitude
• Descent / Approach — Top of descent to short final
• Landing — Short final to touchdown
• Post-flight / Shutdown — After-landing checks, parking, post-flight reflection

Situation Type (7 options)

The category that best describes what kind of moment this was.

• Knowledge Error — "I lacked the knowledge or understanding needed"
• Proficiency Error — "My skills weren't up to the task"
• Decision Error — "I exercised poor decision making / judgement"
• Procedural Error — "I unintentionally broke a rule, regulation, procedure, or limitation"
• Communication Error — "There was a misunderstanding or breakdown in communication"
• Intentional Non-Compliance — "I intentionally contravened a rule, regulation, procedure, or limitation"
• Positive Outcome — "I handled this situation well / made a good decision"

Contributing Factors (10 options, pick up to 3)

What conditions were present in this situation?

• Unfamiliarity / Low Recency — New aircraft, new airfield, long time since last flight
• Fatigue — Tiredness affecting performance
• High Workload — Multiple competing demands
• Time Pressure — Real schedule pressure (e.g., daylight closing, slot times)
• Perceived Pressure — Self-imposed urgency
• Stress / Startle — Emotional pressure or sudden events
• Distraction / Interruptions — Anything pulling your attention away
• Environmental Conditions — Weather, light, turbulence, wildlife, etc. (this opens a detail screen for specifics)
• Communication / Coordination Degraded — Comms with ATC, passengers, or crew breaking down
• Loss of Situational Awareness — Lost track of where you are or what's happening

Interventions (12 options, pick up to 3)

What helped you manage the situation?

• Monitoring / Scan / Verification — Active visual or instrument cross-checking
• Intuition / Instinct — Gut feeling that something was off
• Brief / Plan — Pre-thinking the next step
• Checklist / SOP / Standard Flow — Following procedure
• Cross-check / Challenge from Others — Second pair of eyes or voices
• Clear Communication — Active, explicit comms
• Time Buffer / Slowing Down — Buying yourself thinking time
• Workload Management — Prioritising, delegating, deferring
• Conservative Decision — Choosing the safer option even if it's not the "best"
• Automation / System Protections — Letting aircraft systems help
• External Support (ATC/Company/Other) — Asking for help
• No Intervention / Got Lucky — Nothing actively saved you (this is an exclusive choice — if selected, no other interventions apply)

Consequence & Recurrence

Potential Consequence (1-5)

"What was the worst credible outcome if this situation had not been managed well?"

• Insignificant — No real impact on me or my flying
• Minor — Some disruption, but my flying and career are unaffected
• Moderate — This could affect my flying duties, my reputation, or my confidence
• Major — This could seriously affect my career, my licence, cause injury, or damage
• Severe — This could end my career, cause serious injury or worse, or aircraft/property loss

Likelihood of Recurrence (1-5)

"How likely are you to face a similar situation again?"

• Rare — Unlikely, this was a one-off
• Unlikely — Could happen, but I wouldn't expect it
• Possible — Yes, I could find myself here again
• Likely — This is something that comes up in my flying
• Almost Certain — This is going to happen again

The risk matrix (5×5)

Your risk rating is calculated automatically from Consequence × Recurrence. Four bands:

What your distribution means

A single observation's band is one data point. The story is in the pattern.

Mostly Low Risk (Green) — the bread-and-butter of reflection. Moments worth noticing where nothing serious was at stake. A green-heavy distribution is normal and healthy — it means you're building the muscle of noticing routine things, which is where awareness compounds from.

An active Moderate Risk (Yellow) count — the everyday gotchas. Things that could have gone wrong but didn't. Steady yellow reflection is one of the strongest signs of an engaged safety mindset, because these are the observations where pattern-spotting actually pays off.

Repeated High Risk (Orange) observations — real exposure. You got through them, but the margin was thinner than ideal. If you see this pattern, it's worth asking:

• What contributing factors keep showing up?
• Are there preventable patterns in the way I'm operating?
• Should I be adjusting decisions earlier — planning, currency, personal minimums, fatigue management?

This isn't a sign of poor handling. It's a sign your operations have inherent risk that deserves explicit attention.

Multiple Severe Risk (Red) observations — the closest calls, where the worst credible outcome was career-ending or worse. A single Severe observation isn't alarming if you handled it well — it's useful data. But seeing several is a strong signal. It can mean:

• You're regularly flying near operational limits
• Decision-making around go/no-go, weather, fatigue, or currency may warrant scrutiny
• The pattern itself is the most valuable thing to act on

Severe observations are worth talking about — with an instructor, mentor, or a trusted peer. Not to be punished, but to help you identify and break the pattern.

Why log positive outcomes too

Most safety apps focus only on errors. Pilot Exponent supports logging when you made a good decision or handled something well — pick Positive Outcome in Situation Type.

These observations help you see the patterns of what's working, not just what's broken. A green observation is good data, not a failure.

Your dashboard at a glance

• Risk Pulse — at the top of the dashboard, a small sparkline and direction arrow showing whether your average risk is climbing, steady, or decreasing. Compares the last 30 days against the prior 60. Uses its own fixed window so it's independent of the Showing filter. When you don't yet have enough older data, it reads "Building baseline" until the trend kicks in.
• Total Observations — your lifetime count
• This Month / Custom Range — count in the active filter window (label adapts to your chosen range)
• Most Common Risk — the band you log most often
• Risk Distribution — overall share by risk band
• Risk Composition Over Time — breakdown of risk bands over time (daily bars for short ranges, monthly for longer ones)
• Phase of Flight Distribution — where in the flight your observations cluster
• Error Types — what kinds of errors you reflect on. Positive Outcomes appear as a separate callout below the chart (they're not errors, so they sit outside the breakdown — click the count to see all your logged positives).
• Contributing Factors — what conditions show up most
• Interventions Used — what helps you manage situations
• Environmental Threat Pillars — environmental threats grouped by what they tax: Sensory (can you see it), Handling (can you fly it), Performance (can the airplane do it). Three per-pillar bar charts at the top show the specific threats you've logged in each; the Pillar Profile below shows how often each pillar was under pressure and how those observations resolved (green→red colours show the risk outcome of obs that stressed it); a Compound Callout appears when 2+ pillars were stressed in the same observation.
• Recent Activity — your last few observations, click any to view full detail

The date-range filter ("Showing") applies to every chart and KPI except the Risk Pulse and Total Observations (those use lifetime / fixed windows). Pick a preset (7 days, 30 days, etc.) or use Custom Range for From/To dates. Your preset choice is remembered across sessions.

Inbox & Action Plans

The bell icon in the top-right of the header shows your active inbox count. The Inbox is where the system surfaces moments worth your attention — separate from your full observation list because these are the ones flagged for follow-up.

What lands in the Inbox

• Observation flags — fire when you log an observation at Moderate, High, or Severe risk. Intentional Non-Compliance fires at any risk level (it's treated as its own concern regardless of outcome). Positive Outcomes don't fire.
• Patterns — the system watches your recent observations and flags repeating shapes: 3 of last 5 sharing a situation type, 3 of last 5 in one phase of flight, 2+ high-risk observations sharing a contributing factor in 30 days, or 3+ "No Intervention / Got Lucky" entries in 30 days.
• Goal Date Due — when an action plan's goal date arrives.

Each Inbox card explains why it fired in plain language and gives you three choices:

• Create Action Plan — promote the notification into a structured plan with goals, actions, notes, and the linked observations.
• Archive — keeps a historical record (visible under the "Archived" toggle) but removes from active inbox.
• Delete — gone entirely.

Action Plans

Notifications you promote land in Active on the Action Plans page. The workflow runs:

• Active — newly created, ready to work on
• In Progress — you've started shaping what you'd change
• Completed — closed out
• Archived — silent terminal state, doesn't show in the active board

Each plan keeps the original observation(s) linked, so months later you can review a completed plan and see exactly what triggered it. Patterns carry all matched observations into the plan, not just the headline one.

Privacy

Your observations are private to you. No instructor, employer, or other pilot can see your individual data.

When instructor / organisation tiers eventually arrive, they will only ever see aggregated, de-identified patterns across a group — never individual observations or who logged them. Privacy is enforced technically, not just by policy.

Deletion is hard delete — no soft-delete, no shadow record. When you delete an observation, it's gone.

Tips for getting the most out of it

• Log promptly — within 24-48 hours of a flight while details are fresh
• Title clearly — "Rushed approach brief at Mudgee" beats "approach"
• Use Notes — the structured fields capture data; the Notes field captures the human story. Both matter.
• Look for patterns, not volume — 30 thoughtful observations beat 100 hasty ones
• Don't fear high-risk ratings — they reflect exposure, not skill
• Edit when you need to — every screen of the wizard has a Save button in edit mode, so updating one field doesn't require clicking through all 6