Summery Eastern Airline

Andru Reid

Crew Resource Management

        Crew resource management or cockpit resource management (CRM) is a set of training procedures for use in environments where human error can have devastating effects.  Used primarily for improving air safety, CRM focuses on interpersonal communication, leadership, and decision making in the cockpit.

The term "cockpit resource management" (later derived to "crew resource management") was coined in 1979 by NASA psychologist John Lauber who had studied communication processes in cockpits for several years.  While holding a command hierarchy, the concept was intended to foster a less authoritarian cockpit culture, where co-pilots were encouraged to question captains if they observed them making mistakes.

CRM grew out of the analysis by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) of the 1978 United Airlines Flight 173 crash, where the plane ran out of fuel while the flight crew was correcting a landing gear problem.  The NTSB issued its monumental recommendation to require CRM training for airline crews on June 7, 1979.  A few weeks later, United Airlines was the first airline to provide CRM training for its cockpit crews in 1981.  By the 1990’s, it had become a global standard.  The CRM course concept is to maintain teamwork.  Teamwork can be achieved when crews consider each other's job tasks, communicate with others in a timely manner, keep each other informed, and support others by keeping each other up-to-date.

As CRM evolves, its principles have also extended into the mission coordination and aircraft maintenance areas with an improved emphasis on safety at all stages of a flight.  A direct effect of the CRM program seems to have been an improved emphasis on safety in a blanket fashion across aviation, and perhaps this is the greatest contribution that CRM has made to airline safety.  The widespread introduction of the dynamic flight simulator as a training aid has allowed various new theories about the causes of aircraft accidents to be studied under experimental conditions.  Based on these results, and attempts to remedy the apparent deficiency in crew skills, additional training in flight deck management techniques have been introduced by most airlines.  Following a period of experimentation and development, the techniques embraced by the new training became known collectively as CRM. The importance of the CRM concept and the utility of the training in promoting safer and more efficient aircraft operations have now been recognized worldwide.  This platform gave the airlines a way to practice CRM and make mistakes to try and polish the concept of CRM.

For a few years the airline industry went from flying the airplane to monitoring the automation on board as the most important.  But with certain events the airlines have gone back to fly the plane first then monitor the systems.  This was mainly due to CRM.

With my current airline training CRM has become a major part of the “New Hire” classes.  All airlines have put together a program that is verbatim on aircraft profiles and important call outs that need to be made to insure both pilots are on the same page and agreeing the information is put in correctly.  This is one example taken from transcript of a conversation between pilots just before a crash. Prior to CRM.