The paper deals with the psychological and physiological mechanisms characterizing the behavioral patterns of a pilot under emergency situations. In a regular flight, the most important psychic regulator is a target-image and predicting of an assigned task performance serves as the mechanism of its implementation. In non-routine situation, the regulation pattern is significantly changed. Under emergencies, there exist two levels of pilot responses: adaptive-defensive reactions which activate the automated acts and evaluation-decision-making ones which promote intellectual transformations of information to compare the conceptual and information models. In order that under emergency the pilot response be successful the specific mental skills are needed to promote the rate of abstraction and determination of key sings which are the basis for decision making. Experimental data on the reliability and adequacy of pilot response in real flight under simulated contingencies are presented. Typical disorders of cognitive psychic processes, behavioral disorganization under these conditions have been described. The components of psychophysiological adequacy of pilots and principles and means of its creation are discussed.