The Japanese term “Shisa Kanko” loosely translates as “pointing and calling.” More accurately, it involves the safety practice of pointing at important indicators and calling out their status. This practice was developed by the Japanese railway system in 1913 and has led to an incredible level of safety and efficiency in that system. According to Dr. Mica Endsley, 76.3% of aviation accidents studied occurred from a simple failure to perceive the risk. Safety depends on awareness.
Pointing and calling are methods for raising the consciousness level of workers and confirming that conditions are regular and clear, increasing the accuracy and safety of work.
For those unfamiliar, Japan’s Shinkansen (bullet train system) has had ZERO passenger fatalities in 60 years of operation and carries 400,000 people a day (more than impressive). The system has such a high standard of efficiency that a train off schedule by even 3 seconds is rare. This stands in sharp contrast to American operations, where minutes to hour-long delays in mass transit are common and accident investigations unfortunately still discover operators who are texting or operating under the influence.
The act of actually pointing and calling the desired operation seems to raise our human awareness to the conscious level. This avoids those “brain fart” moments that in high-consequence environments can lead to fatal accidents. Several studies confirm that this “pointing and calling” prevents 85% of these common human errors. This incredible level of safety should be imported into aviation. The adoption of aviation-style checklists into hospital operations (by Peter Pronovost) resulted in an incredible safety improvement: Checklist Manifesto.
“In the Keystone Initiative’s first eighteen months, the hospitals saved an estimated $175,000,000 in costs and more than 1,500 lives. The successes have been sustained for almost four years—all because of a stupid little checklist.” – Atul Gawande, The Checklist (The New Yorker, December 2007)
If you study our 200 million-year-old human operating system (brain), most of our daily activities are performed simply (and mostly efficiently) by habit. But we did not evolve this system in the modern technological world. Habits function pretty well in a predictable, safe environment, where failures are mostly inconsequential. But without metacognition (higher-level double-checking) habit fails badly in aviation. Raising the awareness to a higher Code Yellow level is essential for safety in changing, high-consequence situations. (See Dr. Gary Klein’s Streetlights and Shadows)
Correct checklist usage requires verbalization and conscious, aware consideration. It is essential to actually say every item and consider it at a conscious level. Just mumbling your way through a long list will not enhance safety, since we are operating at a lower level of awareness.
Many larger flight schools are already using the ‘pointing/calling” technique when taxiing: “Clear right, center, and left, turning left…” “Pointing and calling” raises every operation to the metacognitive level of awareness. In crewed operations, this vocalization also “shares the mental model.” I encourage pilots I am training to vocalize every switch or control they change. I had a learner in a jet fail to turn on the tail boots switch in some horrible winter conditions recently. (He turned on two out of three green toggle switches and I missed it from the right seat). We landed with an amazing load of ice on the tail – and this could have killed us. This was all from one missed toggle switch (aviation is unforgiving). Fly safely out there (and often).
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Join us May 11th for a free webinar This will have John Dorcey, a long-time CFI who prepares CFIs for testing. We will discuss how to prepare for the Initial CFI evaluation.
If time allows, we hope to also add some advice on the “real job” of becoming a truly effective aviation educator. What you learned to acquire that CFI temporary is only half the job; CFI-PRO™ provides the “Missing Manual” of how we really teach. 
