Definition
A deliberate action taken by a pilot to reduce, avoid, or manage an identified risk before it affects the safety of a flight. Risk intervention is the step that follows risk identification and assessment in the aeronautical decision-making process, where the pilot chooses a course of action to lower the risk to an acceptable level.
Plain English
Once you spot something that could make a flight unsafe, risk intervention is what you actually do about it — change the plan, add a margin, get more information, or call it off.
Context Anchor
Seen in aeronautical decision-making discussions when a pilot identifies a risk and chooses an action to manage it.
Derivation
Intervention comes from the Latin intervenire, meaning 'to come between.' In aviation, the pilot 'comes between' the identified risk and the flight outcome by taking action to change the situation before it causes harm.
Why Pilots Care
Effective risk intervention prevents accidents by turning awareness of danger into concrete changes in plans or actions.
Intuition Check
Do not read intervention as something only another person does after an emergency starts. In this context, risk intervention is any timely action the pilot takes to manage a risk before it causes trouble.
Example Sentence 1
After noting deteriorating weather along the route, the pilot's risk intervention was to delay departure by two hours and refile with an alternate.
Example Sentence 2
During the flight, risk intervention included diverting to an alternate airport when thunderstorms developed ahead.