Dr. Jean Pinet’s basic training was in engineering. He joined the Centre d’Essais en Vol (French flight test center) where he became flight test engineer in 1957 and experimental flight test pilot in 1958. In 1965, he joined the Concorde flight test team at Sud Aviation until the Aérospatiale Concorde program came to an end in 1985. He was responsible for testing the flight-handling qualities of the aircraft and for customer crew training. In 1972, he founded the Aeroformation training center (today Airbus Training), which he directed until his retirement in 1994. He designed and set in place the Concorde and Airbus A300 to A340 training systems. He participated in training activities as a pilot instructor, still carrying out test flights as a test pilot. Concerned by the problems of the crews’ operational behavior, Dr. Pinet co-founded the Icarus Committee of the Flight Safety Foundation and the European Institute of Cognitive Engineering EURISCO. He successfully completed a PhD in psychology-ergonomics in 2011. He is a member of the Air and Space Academy (AAE), of which he was president in 1989 and secretary general from 1992 to 2004.
Jean Pinet's experience as one of the world's leading test pilot-he was the first man to pilot the Concorde supersonically-together with his authoritative knowledge and insight relating to human factors, lead to a unique examination of pilot reactions to unexpected events and of related human being possibilities and limitations. -Sir Stuart Matthews, President, Flight Safety Foundation (retired) This is a very valuable book that is already on my shelf. Written by an exceptional experimental test pilot and engineer (Concorde), an international expert in flight training and a cognitive engineering scientist, it mixes expertise, experience and techniques such as eye tracking cross-fertilized by human and life sciences knowledge and methods. -Guy Andre Boy, Florida Institute of Technology I would regard the book as a valuable tool for the nonpilot to get an idea of what piloting entails, and for the pilot to calibrate himself against what is in the book. The book is also a valiant effort to frame a mental model for a very sophisticated type of task. -IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, August 2016