Examining the conceptual relationship between loss of situational awareness and spatial disorientation

With the beginning of flying of human being who maintains his life in a terrestrial environment, his physiological inadequacies have caused him to experience spatial disorientation illusions in flight environment. These illusions have resulted in the occurrence of some accidents since pilots have been subjected to loss or reduction of situational awareness. In this thesis, the relationship between Loss of Situational Awareness (LSA) and Spatial Disorientation (SD), which is ambiguous in the literature, have been examined conceptually by means of a proposed model and SD is cosidered as a component of LSA. LSA, SD and SD illusions, sample occurrences concerning Situational Awareness components and F-16 accidents reported between 1975 and 2018 in the open literature have been examined statistically and countermeasures have been offered in coping with SD.