The book calls this organisational stress — Page 139, Lesson 214

Let’s talk about how stress can spread through an entire airline, and then how it affects you personally as a crew member. First, if a company’s leadership cares more about short-term money than about safety and doing things properly, that attitude doesn’t stay in the boardroom — it infects the whole organisation. The book calls this organisational stress. It’s not just one person feeling stressed; it’s a company-wide problem. How do you spot it? The symptoms show up clearly: poor industrial relations — that means tension between management and staff, maybe disputes or low morale. You’ll see absenteeism — people calling in sick more often. And critically, there will be an increased accident/incident rate. When the organisation is stressed, safety suffers, and the numbers prove it. Now let’s zoom in on you as aircrew. Work stress for a pilot can come from two timeframes: sudden high workload, or long-term high workload. A sudden high workload might be an emergency — an engine failure, a fire warning, something that happens right now. The stress you feel in that moment is made much worse if you’re unsure how to react, or if you feel inadequately trained for that specific situation. That’s why realistic simulator training is essential — it reduces the impact of any emergency by making sure you’ve practised it before. When you know what to do, the stress doesn’t spike as high. Then there’s long-term high workload. Airlines operate in a competitive world. They have to make maximum use of staff and equipment — an aircraft and crew sitting on the ground aren’t making money. Even with modern ATC, there are times when airspace and airports get overcrowded. Add in technical delays — a broken part, a late arrival — and you’ve got extra stress building up over time. Rostering is another source. If a particular pilot has to do an excessive number of night flights, that disrupts their home life — irregular sleep, missed time with family. That disruption itself becomes a source of cumulative stress — it piles up, flight after flight. Finally, poor relationships and poor communication — with management and with colleagues, both on and off the flight deck — lead to stress. The book gives a sobering example: cockpit voice recordings from after some accidents have captured crew members arguing on the flight deck just before the accident happened. That’s stress in action, and it’s deadly. So organisational stress, sudden high workload, long-term pressure, rostering problems, and poor communication — these are all real sources of stress that you’ll need to recognise and manage as a professional pilot.