Every commercial pilot, or a pilot that works with a crew, knows about a term called ‘CRM’. It stands for Crew Resource Management. So, what exactly does that mean? It just means that the captains must always use the resources that he has available to him – his co-pilot. A long time ago, the captain always had the final decision – and still does. But today, the co-pilot must be a lot more assertive than they were before. The co-pilot has a larger say than they had before. Each airline has a different way of teaching their pilots CRM.
How efficient does CRM make our cockpits? Well, the answer would be: VERY. Imagine a cockpit without a first officer. Only one person, carrying out checklists, making sure the gears are down and locked before landing, making sure the aircraft is in its right path.
Unfortunately though, not everything goes to plan. For example, take the Emirates A340-500 in Melbourne just a few weeks ago, where the pilots miscalculated the weight of the aircraft by 100,000 pounds. Obviously the flight crew weren’t as switched on as they should have been.
Another incident, when a Tri-Star carrying a full load of passengers crashes. Why? Because nobody was flying the plane. They were all too busy focusing on other problems they had. If the flight crew had practiced their crew resource management at that point in time, then so many lives would not have been lost.
Both the incidents above are not due to mechanical failure. They are due to human error. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have our human pilots flying – because I think it’s better that way. Most incidents are due to people a human error.
So, instead of saying that that’s the problem, what have we done about it? Airbus has a few answers to the problem that most pilots (including myself) don’t like. Almost everything is annoyingly automated; the computer literally asks you twice before you can input something into the computer. A friend of mine put it quite nicely – Airbus is like a Nokia mobile phone. On a Nokia phone, to get to a program, you have to unlock the phone by pressing five different buttons, press the menu button, and navigate your way to a folder… Airbus is no different.
How can we fix this problem? It’s not our pilots that are at fault. It’s just the airlines that need to give them a more thorough training programme. We can no longer have repeats of the American Airlines 587 crash, where an A300 crashed into a high density suburb in New York, America shortly after take-off at John F. Kennedy airport. Over 260 fatalities on board, and 5 on the ground were reported. Well, what went wrong? Again, many say the usual, ‘Human Error’. Yes true, but not the pilots, American Airlines executives trying to save money. They admit that the pilots were not told to limit the use of the rudder, and most American Airlines pilots were using the rudders excessively.
Today, our pilots are a lot more certified, have a lot more qualifications behind their belt, and have a lot more flying time logged down before they can even start thinking of sitting in the left seat. Our airplanes are a lot more sophisticated, they fly faster, they handle better and above all are a lot safer than they were before they evolved.
