You’re on final approach after a long shift — fatigued but feeling relieved to be almost home. However, the weather is significantly worse than forecast, which is starting to worry your co-pilot. Still, you’re so close to the finish line. You’ve briefed the landing, your passengers expect to arrive on time, and air traffic control is expecting you to continue, right?
A missed approach would mean extra fuel burn, paperwork, and delays. So, you press on — just like many others before you.
This is plan continuation bias in action.
It’s the reason experienced pilots have landed with the gear-up, flown into deteriorating weather, or ignored subtle signs of mechanical failure.
The problem? By the time the threats become obvious, it’s often too late.
Here, we’ll break down how plan continuation bias sneaks into our decision-making and why even the best pilots fall for it. But more importantly, we’ll look at how you can guard against it when it matters most.
What is Plan Continuation Bias?
Plan continuation bias is the unconscious cognitive bias to continue with the original plan, despite changing conditions. Or in plain English: you still stick to the plan when you shouldn’t!
Professor Charles West talks about it in an interesting piece of research called, “The Barn Door Effect.”
“When enroute and at altitude, commercial aircraft pilots will deviate around convective weather more than five nautical miles for severe weather and lightning avoidance,” he noted. “These same pilots, given a situation where a similar storm is on final approach to their destination airport, will usually fly underneath a heavy to extreme convective cell with tops in excess of 50,000 feet.”
Of course, this is just one example of plan continuation bias. There are so many ways that we can be affected (see Image 1).
It all comes down to how aware we are of the threats that are present, how flexible we are as pilots, and how good we are at saying no.
What Causes Plan Continuation Bias?
Plan Continuation Bias can have many causes. These can differ depending on your type of operation, where you are in the world, and what crew you are flying with. Let’s go over the 10 main causes (see Image 2).
Firstly, there’s tunnel vision. If all you can see is where you’re trying to end up, it can be harder to be aware of the threats around you. Tunnel vision is common during the landing phase, especially if you’re running out of fuel, weather, and flight time limitations (FTLs).
Next is emotional investment. If you’re emotionally tied to the outcome of a flight, being objective becomes 10 times harder. There are all sorts of reasons, such as not being able to admit you’re wrong about something, or simply trying to avoid losses (loss aversion). It then becomes more “desirable” to overlook negatives and make positives bigger. But it’s a slippery slope.
There are also social and operational pressures. Operational (or commercial) pressure can have a massive impact on pilots pushing through when they shouldn’t. The type of company you’re flying for has a lot of influence on this.
The sunk cost fallacy happens when we continue to invest into something purely based on the amount of resources we’ve already put into it, instead of using proper analysis. Let’s say you’ve made a few decisions in line with your plan A. If all of those decisions make plan B less convenient (if you were to change to it), you will feel more “invested” in plan A, and might stick to it when you shouldn’t.
The fifth cause is status quo bias. When it comes to assessing risk, known variables are easier to process than unknowns. This can create a bias where we take the route of knowns, no matter how bad they might be. The danger here is that we can discount very viable alternatives for the sake of dealing with less unknowns.
Next is time pressure. This is something every pilot will have to deal with at some point. Emergencies, schedules, take-off slots, shift times, and FTLs — we can’t escape any of these. When there is less time available to assess options and think carefully, we can become overly attached to “just sticking to the plan.”
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information in a way that confirms or supports our prior beliefs or values. The relationship between plan continuation bias and confirmation bias is a feedback loop (see Image 3).
If we have a tendency to discount data that suggests we should change our plan, we then have an even stronger reason to stick to the plan. If we have decided that plan A is in fact what we’re going with, confirmation bias can then become even stronger.
There is also the danger of overconfidence and complacency. The thing is, overconfidence can lead to complacency, which can lead to plan continuation bias. If we’re so confident we can deal with that incoming weather front, we might not be seeing the overall picture clearly and not deviate when we should.
The ninth cause is authority gradient. This is defined as the established, and/or perceived, command and decision-making power hierarchy in a team, crew or group situation, and also how balanced the distribution of this power is within the team, crew or group.
The danger here is an authority gradient that’s way too steep. If a captain does not take the opinion of their first officer seriously, then no matter how bad plan A might be, there’ll be a tendency to stick to it despite someone pointing out its flaws.
The final cause is proximity to destination. Remember the Barn Door Effect we mentioned earlier? We’re often much less risk averse when we are closer to our destination. It’s not just because of the sunk cost fallacy we’ve mentioned earlier. Goal fixation is important here.
Goal fixation is the tendency to become overly focused on achieving a specific objective. As we get closer and closer to achieving it, it becomes harder and harder to see the big picture and make rational decisions.
How to Avoid Plan Continuation Bias
So, what can we do to keep our brains from continuing with plan A when the world around us screams we should go to plan B? Let’s take a look (see Image 4).
Define Decision Points
Switching to plan B becomes much easier if you’ve put
pre-defined conditions in place that when hit, trigger a review of what you’re doing. For instance, in air medical operations, when we cross a valley in poor weather, we might say: “If we’re not visual with this mast on the map by point X, we turn around.”
If upon reaching point X, we are not visual, we immediately know that plan A has just become plan B. Without defining this, it might be tempting, once you’ve reached point X, to inch a little further to see if plan A is still feasible. And that’s a very effective way to cause an accident.
Ask the What Ifs
What ifs are an excellent way to prepare for the unexpected. Such as:
• If the weather isn’t quite as expected, what are our options?
• If the passengers or medical crew are late, how can we deal with it?
• If this airport closes unexpectedly, what are our divert options?
• If the cloud-base beyond the valley is worse, how can we turn back?
• If we enter IMC inadvertently, what are our actions?
Actively thinking about questions by yourself or as a crew can help you stay calm and act rationally when things go south.
Challenge and Verify Assumptions
Assumptions are a slippery slope in aviation. Just because something happened 99 times in the exact same way, does not mean it will happen the 100th time that way as well. Thinking that it will be the same again can set you up for failure and difficult situations. Any time an assumption is made, make a conscious effort to verify how likely it is that it’s actually true. If you can’t verify it, but you know it is likely, make sure you still have an option if it doesn’t turn out that way!
Encourage Open Communication
Actively seeking feedback and input from your crewmembers is a pretty straightforward antidote to plan continuation bias. Unless other crewmembers are suffering from the exact same mindset, they can help you snap out of clinging to plan A when you shouldn’t. Ask questions such as: “Does anyone see a reason why continuing might not be the best decision?” or “What are the threats I have missed here?” Any answer to these questions will help you stay on the right track when things get tough.
Commit to the Process, not the Outcome
Getting too committed to the outcome of a flight is a bad idea in general. Try to shift your focus from getting to the destination, to making the safest decisions at each stage of the flight.
The latter will probably get you to your destination the majority of the time, but the times that you shouldn’t, it will make all the difference.
Conclusion
Plan continuation bias is one of the most dangerous traps in aviation decision-making — precisely because it can feel so natural. The closer we get to the goal, the harder it becomes to step back and reassess.
Fatigue, pressure, and overconfidence all push us toward sticking with a plan, even when the safest choice is to change it.
The best way to counteract this bias? Recognize when it’s happening.
Build decision points into your flight. Ask the tough “what if” questions. Encourage open discussions with your crew. Most importantly: commit to making the safest decision in the moment, not just the one that gets you to the destination.
The best pilots aren’t the ones who always stick to plan A; they’re the ones who know exactly when to switch to plan B.