Aviate, navigate, communicate: task priority in an emergency

Fly the aircraft first, decide where you’re going second, and talk only once the first two are handled.

The idea

When several things go wrong at once, the instinct is often to reach for the radio — to tell someone. That instinct can kill you. The oldest rule in the cockpit puts tasks in a fixed order: aviate (keep the aircraft flying and yourself conscious), navigate (get to safe air and a plan), then communicate.

In a rapid decompression the clock is brutal: at altitude your time of useful consciousness is measured in seconds. Don your mask and keep control before anything else — a perfectly worded radio call is worthless from an unconscious pilot. Order the tasks below, then replay the run and watch what deteriorates when talking jumps the queue.

How it works

Sort every task into one of three buckets, and never let a lower bucket jump ahead of a higher one.

AVIATE     keep the aircraft under control, keep yourself
           conscious            -> don masks, fly the aircraft
NAVIGATE   where am I going, and is it safe?
                                -> initiate the emergency descent
COMMUNICATE tell the people who need to know
                                -> squawk 7700, call ATC, brief cabin

Rule:  finish AVIATE before NAVIGATE, finish NAVIGATE before
       COMMUNICATE.  Talking never precedes flying.

Why it matters at 35,000 ft (rapid decompression):
  useful consciousness ~ 15-20 s.  Masks on at  5 s -> you stay sharp.
                                    Masks on at 26 s -> you're already out.

Shedding and redistributing tasks is the same principle applied to people. If one crew member is task-saturated — or incapacitated by hypoxia — the other takes the highest-priority open task first. You drop the cabin briefing before you drop flying the aircraft, never the reverse.

When to use it

Reach for aviate-navigate-communicate when…	The limit / trade-off
Multiple demands arrive at once and you must pick what to do first.	It sets order, not content — you still need the correct memory items and checklist for the failure.
Someone is task-saturated or incapacitated and work must be reassigned.	Requires clear crew coordination; a silent reshuffle can drop a task no one is now holding.
The radio is tempting but the aircraft isn’t yet stable.	Communicating late is usually recoverable; flying late often isn’t.

Watch out for

• Answering the radio first. A controller’s call, or the urge to declare an emergency, pulls attention off the aircraft at the worst moment. Fly first; ATC can wait a few seconds.
• Skipping your own oxygen. In a decompression, mask yourself before you help anyone or touch the radio. An unconscious pilot helps no one — the same logic as securing your own mask before assisting others.
• Fixating on one problem. Heads-down troubleshooting a warning light while the aircraft descends into terrain is aviate-failure disguised as diligence. Keep flying the aircraft throughout.
• Not shedding tasks under saturation. Trying to do everything yourself when overloaded guarantees the top task slips. Say it out loud, hand off the low-priority items, protect aviate and navigate.
• Silent role changes. “I’ll take it” without confirming who now flies and who works the problem leaves a gap. Verbalize the handover: who aviates, who navigates, who talks.

Worked example

An interviewer asks: “Rapid decompression at cruise. Your first actions?” A weak answer starts with “declare an emergency with ATC.” A strong answer is ordered: “Aviate first — oxygen mask on, confirm my colleague’s mask, keep the aircraft under control. Navigate — initiate an emergency descent toward a safe altitude on a suitable heading. Only then communicate — squawk 7700, declare with ATC, and brief the cabin. If my colleague is incapacitated, I take the highest open task first and say clearly that I’m now flying and navigating alone.” The sequence, and the explicit task-shedding, is the whole answer.