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.

Crew resource management formally began with a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommendation made during their investigation of the United Airlines Flight 173 crash. There a DC-8 crew ran out of fuel over Portland, Oregon while troubleshooting a landing gear problem.

The term “cockpit resource management” (later generalized to “crew resource management”) was coined in 1979 by NASA psychologist John Lauber who had studied communication processes in cockpits for several years. While retaining 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.

Crew Resource management grew out of the 1977 Tenerife airport disaster where two Boeing 747 aircraft collided on the runway killing 577 people. A few weeks later, NASA held a workshop on the topic, endorsing this innovative training. United Airlines was the first airline to provide CRM training for its cockpit crews in 1981. By the 1990s, it had become a global standard.

United Airlines additionally trained their flight attendants to use CRM in conjunction with the pilots to provide another layer of enhanced communication and teamwork. Studies have shown that by both work groups using CRM together, communication barriers are reduced and problems can be solved more efficiently, leading to increased safety. CRM training concepts have been modified for application to a wide range of activities where people must make dangerous time-critical decisions. These arenas include air traffic control, ship handling, firefighting, and medical operating rooms.

Overview

CRM aviation training has gone by several names, including cockpit resource management, flightdeck resource management, and command, leadership, and resource management, but the current generic term, crew resource management, was widely adopted. When CRM techniques are applied to other arenas, they are sometimes given unique labels, such as maintenance resource management or maritime resource management.

CRM training encompasses a wide range of knowledge, skills, and attitudes including communications, situational awareness, problem solving, decision making, and teamwork; together with all the attendant sub-disciplines which each of these areas entails. CRM can be defined as a management system which makes optimum use of all available resources—equipment, procedures and people—to promote safety and enhance the efficiency of operations.

CRM is concerned with the cognitive and interpersonal skills needed to manage resources within an organized system, not so much with the technical knowledge and skills required to operate equipment. In this context, cognitive skills are defined as the mental processes used for gaining and maintaining situational awareness, for solving problems and for making decisions. Interpersonal skills are regarded as communications and a range of behavioral activities associated with teamwork. In many operational systems as in other walks of life, skill areas often overlap with each other, and they also overlap with the required technical skills. Furthermore, they are not confined to multi-crew craft or equipment, but also relate to single operator equipment or craft as they invariably need to interface with other craft or equipment and various other support agencies in order to complete a mission successfully.

CRM training for crew has been introduced and developed by aviation organizations including major airlines and military aviation worldwide. CRM training is now a mandated requirement for commercial pilots working under most regulatory bodies worldwide, including the FAA (U.S.) and JAA (Europe). Following the lead of the commercial airline industry, the U.S. Department of Defense began formally training its air crews in CRM in the mid 1980s.Presently, the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy require all air crew members to receive annual CRM training, in an effort to reduce human-error caused mishaps. The U.S. Army has its own version of CRM called Aircrew Coordination Training Enhanced (ACT-E).

Skills of CRM

The primary goal of CRM is enhanced situational awareness, self awareness, leadership, assertiveness, decision making, flexibility, adaptability, event and mission analysis, and communication. Specifically, CRM aims to foster a climate or culture where the freedom to respectfully question authority is encouraged. It recognizes that a discrepancy between what is happening and what should be happening is often the first indicator that an error is occurring. This is a delicate subject for many organizations, especially ones with traditional hierarchies, so appropriate communication techniques must be taught to supervisors and their subordinates, so that supervisors understand that the questioning of authority need not be threatening, and subordinates understand the correct way to question orders.

Cockpit voice recordings of various air disasters tragically reveal first officers and flight engineers attempting to bring critical information to the captain’s attention in an indirect and ineffective way. By the time the captain understood what was being said, it was too late to avert the disaster. A CRM expert named Todd Bishop developed a five-step assertive statement process that encompasses inquiry and advocacy steps:

• Opening or attention getter – Address the individual. “Hey Chief,” or “Captain Smith,” or “Bob,” or however the name or title that will get the person’s attention.
• State your concern – Express your analysis of the situation in a direct manner while owning your emotions about it. “I’m concerned that we may not have enough fuel to fly around this storm system,” or “I’m worried that the roof might collapse.”
• State the problem as you see it – “We’re showing only 40 minutes of fuel left,” or “This building has a lightweight steel truss roof, and we may have fire extension into the roof structure.”
• State a solution – “Let’s divert to another airport and refuel,” or “I think we should pull some tiles and take a look with the thermal imaging camera before we commit crews inside.”
• Obtain agreement (or buy-in) – “Does that sound good to you, Captain?”

These are often difficult skills to master, as they may require significant changes in personal habits, interpersonal dynamics, and organizational culture.

Case studies

United Airlines Flight 173

United Airlines Flight 173 crew was making an approach to the Portland International Airport on the evening of Dec 28, 1978 when they experienced a landing gear abnormality. The captain decided to enter a holding pattern so they could troubleshoot the problem. The captain focused on the landing gear problem for an hour, ignoring repeated hints from the first officer and the flight engineer about their dwindling fuel supply. Only when the engines began flaming out did he realize their dire situation. They crash landed in a wooded suburb of Portland, Oregon, over six miles short of the runway. Of the 189 people aboard, two crewmembers and eight passengers died. The NTSB made several recommendations in their report including:

“Issue an operations bulletin to all air carrier operations inspectors directing them to urge their assigned operators to ensure that their flightcrews are indoctrinated in principles of flightdeck resource management, with particular emphasis on the merits of participative management for captains and assertiveness training for other cockpit crewmembers. (Class II, Priority Action) (X-79-17)”

The NTSB Air Safety Investigator who wrote this recommendation was aviation psychologist, Dr. Alan Diehl. He was assigned to investigate this accident and realized it was similar to several other major airline accidents including the Eastern Airlines Lockheed-1011 crash into the Everglades and the runway collision between Pan Am and KLM Boeing-747s at Tenerife.