What Influences Whether Airline Pilots and Seafarers Save Fuel?

What influences whether employees, such as your crew, engage in efficient and sustainable behaviours? There are a myriad of factors covering external influences and individuals’ internal mindsets and tendencies. In both the aviation and maritime industries, airline pilots and seafarers must work with the operational constraints of their aircraft or vessels and deal with practical challenges ranging from severe weather conditions to conflicting guidance from air traffic or vessel charterers, all while maintaining safety as a top priority.

These external influences, paired with an individual’s personal inclinations, are the very factors that behavioural scientists study when trying to understand why people act in particular ways. At Signol, we primarily use the popular COM-B framework – one of the various frameworks used in behavioural science to understand the drivers and barriers of people’s behaviour. The framework suggests that for an individual to engage in a behaviour (B), they must be physically and mentally capable (C) of the behaviour, have the physical and social opportunity (O) to engage in that behaviour, and be sufficiently motivated (M) to engage in that behaviour. These three elements of capability, opportunity, and motivation are not mutually exclusive and can influence each other – for instance, more capable individuals might also be more motivated to engage in a behaviour.

Our insights into crew behaviour

To understand the barriers and drivers of airline pilot and seafarer behaviour, we’ve conducted hundreds of interviews and surveys with pilots and seafarers, observed pilots and seafarers in their working environments, reviewed existing academic and industry research on pilot and seafarer personalities, and analysed operational data measuring their behaviour. Now, we’re sharing some of these insights into what affects their behaviour.

Let’s begin with capability. When someone doesn’t perform a desired behaviour – in any context – it can be natural to think that they weren’t actually able to do so. But when working with highly trained and experienced professionals, such as airline captains and ship masters and chief engineers, capability is largely not a barrier – with some minor exceptions. To become an airline captain, pilots have logged thousands of flying hours, acquired a pilot’s licence, and participated in annual training. Airlines train pilots in fuel-saving behaviours which are standard operating practices – like Single Engine Taxi. Our own data analysis indicates that airline captains, across both short- and long-haul commercial airlines in different parts of the world, already implement these fuel-saving behaviours – although at varying frequencies – showing that in general, they are capable of performing these actions. In short, airline captains have both the technical knowledge and the physical skills required to save fuel.

Likewise, ship masters and chief engineers have years of experience at sea and are the most senior professionals on a vessel. They have a wide range of expertise, from masters understanding the maths around navigation to chief engineers understanding the physics and mechanics of their vessel equipment. Once again, our data analysis shows that ship masters and chief engineers across tankers, containers, bulkers, and cruise ships do engage in fuel-saving behaviours – to varying degrees. Like airline captains, ship masters and chief engineers are highly capable individuals when it comes to saving fuel and CO2 emissions. Nonetheless, the variation we have found in the implementation of fuel-saving behaviours shows that both groups face some barriers, such as cognitive overload. Both the aviation and maritime industries are introducing several tools and apps that constantly vie for these professionals’ attention – this barrier of information overload is something we are very conscious of at Signol.

Let’s now consider the opportunity element of the COM-B framework: Does the physical environment and the social context make it possible or likely for an individual to engage in a behaviour? We know pilots and seafarers face physical barriers that prevent them from saving fuel when flying or sailing respectively. For instance, some airports don’t allow Single Engine Taxi and some aircraft don’t allow Single Engine Taxi Out. In maritime, optimally trimming the vessel isn’t possible at port or while manoeuvring. At Signol, we work with each airline and shipping company to explicitly identify these circumstances to ensure we only focus on genuine opportunities for fuel-saving behaviour.

Even when accounting for these physical barriers, our statistical analyses show untapped opportunities for both groups to save fuel. Other barriers might lie in the social context around fuel-saving initiatives. In particular, how supportive the employer and key stakeholders are of fuel-saving behaviour and whether pilots and seafarers perceive their peers to be making fuel-saving efforts, too. Our research has indicated that airline captains and ship masters and chief engineers don’t always receive recognition for their fuel-saving efforts and in some companies, they’re far more likely to hear from management when something has gone wrong than when they’ve achieved an efficiency gain. The limited social support for pilots and seafarers’ fuel-saving behaviour is a barrier that Signol addresses.

Finally, we arrive at motivation – the third element of the COM-B framework. Over the years, we’ve investigated how emotionally invested pilots and seafarers are in saving fuel for their employers and cutting down CO2 emissions to help the environment. Our first finding is that, unsurprisingly, these two groups of professionals are not homogeneous. Individuals within both groups are motivated by different things – such as their keen sense of professionalism, setting new personal bests, and balancing the top priority of safety with other priorities such as on-time performance. Saving fuel or CO2 emissions is not always one of their top priorities.

Very few pilots or seafarers report a high degree of satisfaction when they engage in fuel-saving behaviour or a high degree of disappointment when they miss an opportunity to save fuel. These varying levels of motivation for fuel-saving explain, at least in part, the variation we’ve seen in how often each airline captain or ship master and chief engineer acts on their fuel-saving opportunities. Given the generally high levels of capability and the number of untapped opportunities for fuel-saving behaviour we see in both industries, we’ve identified the variance in individual motivation as a key barrier to increased fuel-saving behaviour.

We’ve spent the past 6+ years systematically investigating the capability, opportunity, and motivation for airline pilots and seafarers to engage in fuel-saving behaviour. In other words, we’ve been asking why pilots and seafarers aren’t acting on a number of genuine opportunities to save fuel. As a result of our research deep dive, we have identified key barriers such as cognitive overload, limited social support from the employer, and varying levels of motivation to cut down fuel burn and emissions. Signol’s behaviour change service tackles each of these barriers, as well as several others we’ve identified, such as mental biases, with evidence-based behaviour change techniques – which is the topic of our next article in this series.