What generally causes fixation in instrument scanning?

• A. Over-reliance on the attitude indicator
• B. Ignorance of the horizon
• C. Misreading the VSI
• D. Understanding one instrument better than others

Answer: (D)

Fixation in instrument scanning happens when you lock onto one instrument because you understand or trust it more than the others. When you’re most comfortable with a single data source, you tend to rely on its readings and stop actively scanning the rest of the panel, which narrows your attention and can let other cues slip by unnoticed. To avoid this, develop and stick to a disciplined cross-check pattern that regularly compares attitude, heading, airspeed, altitude, and vertical speed, so multiple instruments corroborate each other. The other options describe specific cues or errors, but the general tendency behind fixation is this biased focus on one instrument.