The Three P Model at Fisk - Making the Oshkosh Arrival One Small Decision at a Time

The Three P model - Perceive, Process, Perform - is the FAA’s framework for aeronautical decision making, and it’s the single most useful tool for flying the EAA AirVenture arrival into Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Instead of freezing on one overwhelming question (“Should I fly into the world’s busiest airport in a line of traffic I can’t fully see?”), you run a continuous loop that reduces the whole arrival to the next small decision in front of you. Referenced in the Airman Certification Standards (ACS) as part of risk management, it scales from your first solo to the flight deck.

What Is the Fisk Arrival at Oshkosh?

For one week every summer, Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh becomes the busiest tower on the planet - roughly half a million people and thousands of airplanes converge on EAA AirVenture.

The arrival is unlike anything at your home field. It begins at Ripon, a small town southwest of the airport. From Ripon you follow the railroad tracks northeast to a point called Fisk. At Fisk, a controller watches you with his eyes - not radar - and identifies you by color and type. When he calls “Red high-wing, rock your wings,” you rock your wings so he knows which airplane is you, and he assigns you a runway.

The procedure is published in the AirVenture NOTAM. The faster arrival group flies at 90 knots and 1,800 feet, with a separate, lower altitude and speed published for slower airplanes. Read the NOTAM until you can see it with your eyes closed, and fly it exactly as written. That’s the law here, not advice.

What Is the FAA’s Three P Model?

The Three P model turns a giant, freezing decision into a repeatable loop you run every few seconds. Big questions overwhelm; small ones don’t. Say the three words out loud on your next flight:

• Perceive - gather and name the hazards without judging them yet.
• Process - evaluate what those hazards mean for you, right now.
• Perform - take an action, then check that it actually worked.

How Do I Use the Three Ps on the Oshkosh Arrival?

Picture yourself 40 miles out, running the loop.

Perceive. You name what’s real: a line of airplanes tighter than anything you practice at home, a slow Cub ahead of your faster airplane, a haze layer making traffic hard to pick out against the ground, a passenger asking questions, fuel that’s fine but not generous, and your own elevated heart rate. Perception fails first when you get task-saturated - when workload climbs, your scan collapses inward and you stop seeing the things that can hurt you. The discipline is to keep perceiving out loud and keep the scan moving.

Process. Now you evaluate. The Cub ahead is slower, so your closure rate is the threat - you’ll need to reduce power, add flaps, or S-turn if the NOTAM allows it for spacing. The haze means you trust your perceive step less, so you widen your margin. The elevated heart rate means you’re one notch closer to a mistake, so you deliberately slow your hands and your breathing. This is the step pilots skip: they perceive a hazard and jump straight to acting without asking, “So what does this mean for my flight?”

Perform. You reduce power to open the gap, then confirm the gap is actually growing. If it isn’t, you perform again.

When Should I Break Off the Oshkosh Approach?

The most important performance you can make on this arrival is the go-around. If it doesn’t feel right, break off.

The NOTAM publishes a procedure for exactly this: you climb, turn, exit the arrival, set up again, and come back. Breaking off the approach at Oshkosh is not failure - it is the single most professional thing you can do, and the controllers expect it and respect it.

Every year, the pilots who get into trouble are the ones who felt the picture fall apart and pressed on anyway, because they didn’t want to be the one who went around in front of the crowd. Ego is a hazard. Perceive it, process it, and perform the go-around.

How Do I Use the Three Ps on a Cross-Country?

The loop works up high exactly like it works down low at Fisk.

Say you’re 100 miles out on a summer morning. You perceive building cumulus to the west and a temperature–dew point spread that’s tightening. You process it: Wisconsin summer afternoons build thunderstorms, the convective outlook backed that up in your briefing, and your comfortable arrival window might slam shut by early afternoon. You perform: you push your timing earlier or pick your alternate now - while you’re calm, high, and have options - instead of later when you’re low on fuel and staring at a wall of weather over the field.

That’s the whole game: make the decision early, while you still have altitude, fuel, and daylight to spend.

Why Examiners Want to Hear the Three Ps

On a checkride, when the examiner throws a scenario at you, they don’t just want the right answer - they want to hear your process. They want to see you perceive the hazard, evaluate what it means, choose an action, and then reassess.

If you narrate the Three Ps out loud on your practical test, you’re showing the examiner exactly the risk management the ACS asks for.

Key Takeaways

• Perceive, Process, Perform is the FAA’s ADM framework and appears in the ACS under risk management; it breaks an overwhelming arrival into one small decision at a time.
• The Oshkosh arrival runs Ripon → Fisk → runway; the faster group flies 90 knots at 1,800 feet, and you rock your wings to be identified by a controller using his eyes, not radar.
• Fly the published AirVenture NOTAM exactly as written - read it until you know it cold.
• Breaking off the approach is professional, not a failure. The NOTAM has a published break-off procedure, and controllers expect it.
• The loop is continuous and scales everywhere - use it 100 miles out to beat building weather just as you use it on short final at Fisk.