Guided by Gibson’s position that is neither materialistic nor idealistic for neither matter nor mind is an absolute in Gibson’s ecological psychology, I refer to his research on aviation (1947),

It was after World War II, Gibson’s (1947) research on testing pilot depth perception tested a theory assuming third-dimension space is lost in two-dimensional retinal image. The issue was none of the test, based on cues for depth perception, that predicted success or failure of the pilot, and none of the proposals for improving depth perception made it easier to land an airplane (1986, 148).

Through his mistrials, Gibson (1947) suggested a new theory on the ‘visual world’ where he considered the possibility that there is literally no perception of space without the perception of a continuous background surface. Gibson studied airplane pilots, who technically fly over clouds at higher altitudes. As he noted, (1947, p. 186) “Single aircraft or clouds in the sky are of course objects having a surface, but since here is no background surface behind them, their distance ought, in theory, to be difficult to estimate, and in actual fact, they are.” Essential here is that Gibson, in leaving the laboratory, out in the field, realized another perspective.'

I know where this MM and Thesis will supplement and reinforce each other. Each chapter is my ethnography written to phenomenological describing (the theorizing of) experiences, which is the accumulation up to a point - in order to - avoid emergencies, near accidents, and mechanical failures.

Each chapter weaves in the pilots' voices with weather stories. This gives a glimpse into their decision-making process that was only able to be handled or make a good call due to their experiences which again has led up to point in time (ie. the pilot who was stuck for 3 days).

MM component depends on the pilot that I bring up in each chapter. This chapter is about wind and geographically situated on the East Coast. The MM component will complement with footage from the Tasiilaq, Kulusuk, and the Inland Ice.

Weave in weather ways for atmospheric conditions

1. Takes account of 2 factors - 1. the machine (foreign element of nature) and weather not enemy, SIMS and machine oppose the real-life unpredictable weather - nature ultimate wins machine and weather -

2. It looks at how two elements, one machine and the other weather, shifts in nature first in winds, then fog, snow, icing, then civil twilight, and finally SIM training.

3. Bring process of SIM with MARCO

4. First in forms or turbulance and wind, 2. fog, snow and ice, 3. Civil Twilight.

5. The chapters develop the themes of preparedness and perceptions of weather with a constant movement back and forth between specific fieldnote stories with a progressively more focused and precise analysis of what it means to perceive the virtual and real - no timeline

6. The analysis keeps the human in the DM loop. In the Greenland environment, pilots with local knowledge of the weather system have a level of preparedness. The pilot will still keep making decisions in Greenland due to adverse weather. The affordances of the machine and SIM training are also part of being prepared. Yet, the enabling-constraining factors are human related in the transferring of experience both in knowing the local weather by flying in it and the experiences of being SIM training.

7. combine illusory nature of GL weather systems with meaning to pilot and to those interested.

8. Enabling effect of the machine AP doing to do charters, pickups on the ice, settlement flights, cargo, transport to CAT, ambulance on all machines flights considered search and rescue UAK, and the constraining effect of unpredictable weather and affordances of machine

9. Enabling effect of technical aspet of machine that affords a different way to fly in GL

10. Part 2 - SIM write more of the SIM and machine in writing qualiyt

11. NOT emphasize start and restart and effect train in SIM do things faster compared to REAL - training on is just as good as it is programmed of rate higher

12. in real life - the instrument is a delay - in registering 700ft

13. in real life - could of have been a good landing

14. AI - iti s a programme of teh humand that makes the machine - the human is in teh LOOP.

15. Story is about weather and machines and a pilot's experiences accumulating to the present - and becoming more skilled as a pilot with machine.

16. Transferring of virtual to real and back is through a process that goes both ways

17. Process of discovery in teh Ferry flight from JAV to GOH - SIM training in the transfering of virtual to real

18. With a story in mind - story of weather systems - REVEAL A story in a SINGLE voice. NO marking of past or present - rather indicates SHIFTS through transitional words and punctuation. – or quotes.

19. SHIFT are also detailing shifts in local weather system

20. WRITE IN MODE OF: if the pilot did not have this eye or sense or way to know or percieve the situation, the machine would fall straight down, the wheels sink, if the rotor blades are unbalanced, if the screens go black, if the

21. you have to know your machine to know how it 'mediates' your flying? not sure

Flying in Greenland has personal roots, one of passion and one of home. I’ve been flying privately in Greenland for over 8 years. Of the 2.2 million km squared land mass, I’ve spent year after year, months, and weeks at a time rotating between all the hangar bases from north to south, east to west, and further up northwest closest to Arctic Canada’s boundary, gaining flight hours. As a private pilot, I’m privileged to have flown over all the settlements but one[1] when flying ferry flights from one airport to another. I’ve flown back and forth over the inland ice, explored various mining sites, and seen from above geological features dating back billions of years. I’m humbled by the landscape of Greenland, both in its hostile nature and its illusion of beauty.

Although my relationship with Greenland is as familiar as ‘home,’ my grounding in Greenland is specific to the pilot’s point of view. Pilots have a particular point of view on weather related to aviation’s great fascination with weather. When it’s bad, it takes over the pilot’s flying thoughts. As well as on sky-clear days with light winds and pleasant temperatures, pilots’ question, “Will it stay sky-clear?” Not least, pilots continuously make weather decisions from pre-flight, during up until debrief. In aviation theory, this is known as situational awareness (SA). I would further add the weather to situational awareness. In the context to Greenland’s flight environment, I define what weather situational awareness (WSA) entails.

[1] One settlement on the northeast coast, Ittoqortormiut.

The other root of this thesis is being interdisciplinary.

As anthropology studies aspects of being human, I’m concerned with the ways of knowing and how knowledge is embodied through perceiving. Currently, an understanding of how we perceive the world opens broad questions about the technological age. Referring to Merleau-Ponty and Hubert L. Dreyfus, I’m interested in how the mind is essentially embodied and embedded in the environment. In making sense of the mind and body problem, I look to phenomenology of perception, Dreyfus’s skillful coping, and a field guide to postphenomenology. I also look to James J. Gibson’s ecological approach to visual perception. Moreover, I draw on visual anthropology centering on the pilots’ point of view with a particular focus on what they perceive in their flight environment. Out of the visual are questions concerning what we see, or in Gibson’s words, “What is there to look for?” As well as how technologies, in particular flight simulation, mediate what is perceived in the flight environment.

As I’ve realized after spending time with the pilots at the various settlement bases in Greenland, pilots with local knowledge of the weather allow for a level of preparedness. With an underscoring in preparedness that of weather awareness, or in Aviation terms, weather situational awareness. The worthwhile conclusion solidifies the broader concern of this thesis. That is, weather situational awareness comes from what is perceived in the environment; when pilots fly, they perceive the environment through making good weather decisions, which comes from past experiences flying in it, both in good and bad weather. Gibson’s (1986, p. 140) theory of affordances questions the information available in an ‘ecological value-rich’ environment to perceive. For pilots flying in Greenland, one element of a ‘value-rich’ environment is in the light that diffuses 1 hour before sunrise or after sunset, known as civil dawn and civil dusk. In this hour, the natural light contours the terrain, stars brighten, and the horizon’s range is fully visible, enabling a aviation definition for night flying[1]. Because Gibson’s (1986, p. 141) theory of affordances “points two ways” – specific to the observer and the information to avail is specific to the affordance, it has the potential to be employed in other disciplines. On a technological level, utilizing Gibson’s affordance (Kiran), SIMs virtual environment affords another level of preparedness in simulating training procedures specific to what is directly trained, whether a night instrument procedure or a dual engine failure. Thus, the question that begins and follows through this thesis is, what does it mean to perceive the environment – virtual and real?

Gibson’s (1986, p. 140) theory of affordances question the information available in an ‘ecological value-rich’ environment to perceive. For pilots flying in Greenland, one element of a ‘value-rich’ environment is in the light that diffuses 1 hour before sunrise or after sunset, known as civil dawn and civil dusk. In this hour, the natural light contours the terrain, stars brighten, and the horizon’s range is fully visible, enabling an aviation definition for night flying[1].

EASA Rules of the Air (SERA) defines ‘night’ for night rating as the hours between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight. Civil twilight ends in the evening when the centre of the sun’s disc is 6 degrees below the horizon and begins in the morning when the centre of the sun’s disc is 6 degrees below the horizon.

[1]

True, aviation interests those in aviation. And terms in aviation can only be understood within aviation. ‘Hostile’ is one of them. According to EASA, the European Union Aviation and Safety Agency (EASA) (2023), determining whether the environment is hostile applies if: a successful emergency landing cannot be assured; a safe force landing cannot be made due to inadequate surface; the occupants cannot be adequately protected from the elements; search and rescue response/capability cannot be provided consistent with the anticipated exposure. To grasp the definition of hostile also depends on whether the helicopter has a single or dual engine. Imagine flying over the Labrador Sea with only a single engine. Trying to avoid the dense fog, you pass over the clouds, barely making out the contours of the mountains ahead. What if there’s an engine failure? Three aviation words come to the fore: Aviate, Navigate, and Communicate[1]. After realizing the engine failure, to ‘Aviate’ is the decision-making process – in this instance, enter into autorotation[2]. Second, navigate and direct the course of the helicopter into the water[3]. Communicate – make the radio call. As one pilot revised his flight from Sisimiut to “May Day, May Day, May Day, Nuuk Information this is Helicopter OY-HGL, we have an engine failure, location 30 minutes West of Sisimiut, time 1-0-1-8, heading 2-8-0 degrees, altitude 3000ft, 2hr fuel remaining, 2 POBs[4], we’re going down.” Down deep into the Labrador Sea, grey and cold. At least 60 nautical miles from Cape Dyer, Canada, the nearest land. In a dual or twin-engine aircraft, reach for the emergency checklist and follow it – there is still one engine operative.

Hostile environments are areas that operate over open water covering the sea north of 45°N and south of 45°S. Considering Greenland extends from 59°N to 83°N, with a coastline surrounded by open water (and less and less sea ice), flying is in all hostile areas. The starting point for aircraft operators operating in Greenland is that the outside environment contains risks. With that comes regulations and risk-based management of known risks[5]. Not least, with the weather data gathered from various measuring equipment that is far in between is rather limited for the size of Greenland, a high level of risk is adverse weather. Common controls to reduce and avoid adverse weather are to fly above minima and, if possible, equip machines with weather radar. Reports and route forecasts do lend their weight, yet there are times when a call to get an informed opinion from the meteorologist in Nuuk can concur with the pilot’s assessment. Greenland’s flight environment is hostile: icing avoidance is embedded, Visual Flight Rules[6] are to be flown above minima to be able to see the ground and where rapidly changing weather conditions are common, undeniably, adverse weather in Greenland exposes pilots to situations they would rather not be in. The thing is, helicopters get pilots into valleys, near mountains, and vast open water that are fixed in their past experiences. Dense fog, like being wrapped in a ball, can feel pretty lonely. In clouds, with a possible chance of icing somewhere between take-off and landing, they feel it deep in their nerves. The unpredictability of weather gives reason to be prepared[7]. To grasp both hostile environments and preparedness, flying in Greenland provides an unparalleled precedent.Put in another way, if diverting from the plan to land as soon as possible was unavoidable because of mechanical or poor visibility, be prepared to survive for more than a few days – firm advice from pilots in Greenland.

Heavily reiterated in aviation is preparing for the flight(s). Prepare for enough fuel, prepare for adverse weather, prepare for diversions, prepare a survival kit, and so on. In an instant, a failure occurs; there is an automatic process depending on the situation, to either reach for the controls or monitor the situation to see what the machine is not doing. The pilot keeps the machine in the air; his body heat rises, firm contact with the controls, and all senses on high alert. In a single-pilot operation[8], it’s full-on concentration. One main reason Pilot 2 was able to focus and manually fly the machine comes from his training and experiences. When the screens went black, he drew on his past training and experiences. He was prepared for the worst-case scenario that was shaped from the days he flew the B212, the helicopter that was heard up and down the coast for over 40 years. The rugged utility helicopter that was replaced by a newer, technologically advanced helicopter.

We lament the passing of an era, retiring an older machine, closing of airports, and fragmented knowledge of local weather. We can also be reluctant to accept there are newer machines to fly, new airports to develop, and knowledge of local weather can be learned. Yet, our relationship with our past is part of our complicated thinking of time informed by a series of experiences, an argument made by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945) that our experiencing of the present comes from an encapsulated ‘whole past’ where there is an awareness of one’s stream of experiences unfolding in the present. As I talk with the pilots flying in Greenland, I’m attuned to their experiences of how they were able to avoid a near accident, recover from a failure, and divert from a plan – their approach to flying comes from their experiences culminating up to that moment. This seems to be wildly separated – pilots and philosophy – but they connect through the lines of being human in a changing technological world. Pilot 2 above, through a series of experiences flying for over 17 years, retained not only in past experiences, but his whole body also absorbed his experiences. He didn’t panic or freeze or hold the controls in a death grip, knuckles white and almost paralysed with shock, as it can happen. Looking at the black screens, how Pilot 2 handled the automation failure was in relation to his experiences, where what was implicit to him (unconsciously in his body) was gradually becoming explicit as he took control and manually flew the machine – this retained experience reinforces Merleau-Ponty’s point that one’s experiences are linked to the present situation.

[1] Aviate, Navigate, Communicate – 3 key principles taught in Aviation.

[2] Autorotation is an emergency procedure specifically for helicopters to safely land in an event an engine failure or other failures (i.e., tail rotor failure). It’s essentially a descent where the engine is no longer supplying power to the main rotor which keeps the rotor blades turning – no engine, no power – and then to find a landing spot to do a full touchdown landing.

[3] An emergency landing in water is called Ditching.

[4] POBs is persons on board. As procedure, Nuuk Information for Air Traffic Control would have the information of fuel and POBs and planned route when reporting operations normal with position report of flights over 40 mins. Before leaving the destination, a radio call to Nuuk Information reporting time left, estimated time to destination, fuel/endurance, persons on board POBs, and any other routing information.

[5] Risk-based management take account of risks in Runway Excursions, Fuel Exhaustion, Fuel Contamination, Controlled Flight into Terrain (DFIT), Loss of Control – in-flight (LOC-I), Incorrect Loading, Collison on Ground, Collision, and adverse weather.

[6] Visual Flight Rules or VFR is to fly with reference to the ground at all times. As opposed to IFR, which is flown under Instrument rules with reference to the instruments in the cockpit.

[7] Reflected in the ICAO Emergency Response Plan (International Civil Aviation Organization, 2024) after COVID-19, there is an immediate concern about preparedness within Aviation. See ICAO’s Emergency Response Plan guiding airlines, https://www.icao.int/sustainability/ERP/Pages/default.aspx (Accessed 8 Nov 2024)

[8] Single-pilot operations, as opposed to a multi-crew or a two-pilot concept.

There are feelings the word ‘environment’ engenders because so much of it seems imposed on the natural world and human activity. The environment of Greenland is the Inland Ice covering 80% of the 2.2 million square kilometres of land. Much of the science coverage of Greenland is about the melting ice sheet, sea ice melts, and calving of glaciers, as well as their destabilizing effects on the greater global environmental changes (GEC). But there is a problem. These days, it seems we live in a society of risk. A sense of risk in a changing climate and unpredictable weather phenomena in that we live in a perilous world. Even before Covid 19, there were several research on risk and theorizing risk. Ulrich Beck (1992) highlighted there is an increasing awareness and sensitivity to living with risks. In response to changes in climate, under the section for Policymakers of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC (2022), responding to climate-related risks involves decision-making in a ‘changing world with continuing uncertainty’. Thus, the framing of uncertainty and unpredictability can shape interpretations of reality,

There is also a problem with climate images in climate models. Climate events form vivid images globally, emblematic of the austerity of rapid and possible irreversibility of ‘climate’, particularly for international policymakers and for more global science (Nuttall, 2009). The Arctic regions have become increasingly important for the IPCC assessments by incorporating regional climate models. Climate science in the IPCC is conditioned on simulations of Atmospheric Ocean General Circulation Model (AOGCMs)[1] and Earth Systems Models of Intermediate Climate (EMIC)[2]. The general circulation models (GCMs)[3] are supposed to assess future impacts of ‘climate change’ and predict how modulations on different time scales impact the statistical properties of the climate system. Events such as the extent of the minimum sea ice reducing in size and the rate of melt-water runoff from melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) as a source of fresh water currently dominate in modeling (Randall, et al., 2007). It may seem obvious, but climate systems are made inside labs. True, Arctic Sea ice is a complex indicator of evolving climate changes (Maslowski, et al., 2012). Greenland’s changes in climate, whether in the forms of melting sea ice, withdrawal of the ice sheet, receding glaciers, thawing of permafrost, changes in biodiversity, and resource potentiality, place Greenland in constant movement with nature (Nuttall, 2009).

For an understanding of certain phenomena with human involvement in a longer period, the epoch of the Anthropocene takes into consideration cultural and social theory. In the Anthropocene, in “The Geology of Mankind?” article Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg (2014, p. 65) critique the Anthropocene for placing human activity at the centre of the natural world and put forth this statement, “The ‘Anthropocene’ registers this moment of epiphany: the power to shape planetary climate has passed from nature into the realms of humans.” I too believe humans are not at the centre and that animals and people exist in relation to the environment. Malm and Hornborg (2014, p. 62) question the dominant field of the natural sciences over the social sciences of human perceptions of the environment. For Malm and Hornborg, perceptions of the environment are in line with the abandonment of Cartesian dualism in the approach to the material conditions of human existence[4]. Why do we question our existence in relation to the environment? If in existing in our mind, we refer to René Descartes (1596-1650) who we associate the quote, “I think, therefore I am” (this appeared first in French ‘je pense, donc je suis’ in Discourse on the Method (1637) (1986). In other words, we confuse thoughts separated from our bodily existence. Descartes wanted some certainty, although a certainty in knowledge. Perhaps the natural world exists with or without human existence, and human existence has a relationship with the environment that is worth exploring, as Tim Ingold’s (2000) book Perceptions of the Environment invokes.

[1] Knowns as the GEOS-5 simulate climate variability on a wide range of time scales, from synoptic time scales to multi-century changes in climate.

[2] Earth Systems Models integrate the interactions of atmosphere, ocean, land, ice, and biosphere to estimate global climate.

[3] The GCMs are mathematical models representing the atmosphere and ocean to simulate response to climate to the increasing greenhouse gas emission (IPCC, 2013)

[4] Casting light on the inequitable processes of the fuel economy, Malm and Hornborg (2014) highlight how the natural world becomes constructed by the natural sciences to produce a dominate knowledge of the Anthropocene.