It isn't the automation, it is the Pilot Monitoring, CRM and Culture

Seggy said:
Same at my place.
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I'm kind of surprised that it isn't universally SOP at every airline.

Plus, we're big on stabilized approach criteria and have an "auto snitch" on the airplane so if you don't call it, you're screwed. And if someone calls it and you don't execute one, you're doubly screwed by that example.

Cowboys are great for gunfights but that's about it.
 
Seggy said:
The 'however' is largely a moot point with places with a good culture you want to work for.

Interestingly enough, most 'good' airlines to get on today screen their applicants with a psychological screening test to see if the individual applicants fall into a 'grouping' of personality traits that shows they can play nice in the sandbox. That 'grouping' is further verified by the performance based interview that the applicant will go through. Then there will be a CRM scenario with the interview that triple checks the psychological screening test and the performance based interview to once again shows the applicant falls into that 'grouping'.

After all of that the applicant will be followed their probationary year to see if the interview checks were correct to finally verify they fall into that 'grouping'. Do outliers exist? Absolutely. But the focus is put on the individual before they can even get into the cockpit. That focus is there to make sure they play well in the CRM environment.

Two guys I know at Colgan who didn't play well in the sandbox were denied by some of these 'good' airlines recently. One didn't make it past the psychological screening, the other one didn't pass the interview/crm exercise. I don't think that is a coincidence.
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We're looking at this different. I'm not referring to "bad" applicants or guys who are negatively contributing (or rather detracting) from CRM because they don't want to or don't care to contribute. I'm talking an analysis of how CRM......the team.....is affected by the honest and unintentional mistakes made by each crewmember individually and why the mistake(s) was/were made. Similarly, with regards to the other crewmember, why did he/she go with that mistake......where was their surety level at the time as either the PF or the PM?

I'm looking at this from the straightforward "how did the mistake happen" on the parts of the individual, then how did that affect the team/CRM? Obviously these guys are competent (they're not landing at wrong airports daily or really ever), they're intelligent, many have a large number of hours either in the operation, the aircraft, and/or with total time; so what contributed to the collective errors that convinced them that they were honestly doing the right thing and going to the correct place, when they arrived at a wrong airport? Complacency? Fatigue? Corporate or training culture? CRM culture? Rank/hierarchy pressure? Any or all combinations?

Once it can be understood why the individual made the honest mistake they did and how their particular mistake.....whether PF who was flying the plane, or PM who was backing him up...contributed to the whole; then the CRM issues for that particular incident can be much more fully understood. And contributions will be from both sides, as there are two roles in the cockpit, both of which make up the team up front. Good guys made a mistake; I'm interested in breaking down the why to the individual parts, not for punitive purposes, but for better understanding of the human factors aspect, which is ever evolving and always has something new that we may not yet know or be aware of.

I fully agree with you when it comes talking about bad apples and how culture should weed them out at places with a good culture that people would want to work for.
 
Sol Rosenburg said:
any 121 people here not have the crm that if either PM or PF says Go Around/Abort ya'll are going around no questions asked/no discussion?
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For what it's worth, at The Delta a call for 'Go Around' by any Flight Crewmember must be honored. However, the decision to reject a takeoff is the sole responsibility of the Captain

The verbage for these two concepts are on back-to-back pages in the FOM, so the difference between the two is pretty stark.
 
Unsurprisingly, this same CA promoted goodwill among crews by talking about Colgan guys running off runways in the jetttzzzz in front of pax.

He is a CRM nightmare.

Of course, many of the former MEM based guys are as well, and trying to teach these guys winter ops sucks.

I love going to work, I love going to work....
 
Seggy said:
At Colgan we used to have to fill out an irregularity report if we went around.......
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What was that used for? Strictly safety related purposes (reporting something safety related apart from you that might need to be known by the masses), or was it for punitive purposes to hang the crew somehow?
 
Get-home-itis said:
For what it's worth, at The Delta a call for 'Go Around' by any Flight Crewmember must be honored. However, the decision to reject a takeoff is the sole responsibility of the Captain
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I can sort of see that, though. Rejected takeoff is a double-jeopardy situation. You might die if you do, you might die if you don't. Someone has to decide which is less dangerous right now. OTOH, a go-around....Oh teh noez, we burn some more fuel!
 
Seggy said:
I noticed that a few folks in the Southwest thread were talking about how the FAA is now going to require us to only shoot instrument approaches in wake of the Southwest (and Atlas) aircraft landing at the wrong airport over the last few months. I know that this was 'just' talk, but I want to point out a few things.

Before these aircraft landed at the wrong airport, we saw Colgan, Air France, and Asiana, get their aircraft into different stalls. It is interesting that we are seeing a 'grouping' of extremely similar causes of accidents/incidents in a relatively short period of time. Is that a coincidence? I don't think so.

Out of the Colgan and Air France accidents a big push was made to be less reliant on the automation and 'just fly' the airplane. Now we saw two incidents were aircraft landed at the wrong airport, in visual conditions, conditions that may lead us to 'just fly' the aircraft. I am not sure how the automation was set up in the Atlas and Southwest cockpits, but if the FAA wants to 'push' us to only do instrument approaches, that is in direct contradiction to what they just put out concerning the Colgan and Air France lessons learned. Of course you back up the visual approaches with your automation, but your eyes need to be more outside of the cockpit if you are 'just flying' the aircraft. You cross check with what you have inside, but in the last month even that cross check has failed twice....in a big way.

So do we need more or less automation? Does the FAA need to micromanage how we operate the airplane? If so how do they do it? Or is it something else?

Looking at the Colgan and Air France accident reports it is clear that if there was a lack of a strong pilot monitoring (PM) and a breakdown in CRM. I am not familiar with the culture at Air France or Atlas, but look at the culture of Southwest, Asiana, and Colgan at the time of their accidents/incidents. It doesn't paint a very favorable picture. Southwest has a culture of rushing, Asiana a culture of not speaking up, and Colgan a vindictive culture if one made any type of mistake.

See the similarities here? It has very little to do with the actual mechanics of operating the airplane. It has everything to do with how the crew interacted with themselves and the situation they were in.

The human factors folks at the NTSB and FAA need to focus on the roles of the PM, CRM, and actual culture of the companies when they investigate these incidents/accidents. They can't get caught up in micromanaging how we get the aircraft on the ground. Whether it be a visual or instrument approach, honestly, that really isn't that important. If you have strong pilot monitors, great CRM, and great cultures, getting the aircraft on the ground safely will happen VERY well.
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Maybe I am a little biased, having low time myself. But, the 1500hr rules seems like a cover up for some of the older listed accidents, rather than a solution. As you said, better CRM training and company culture would have done a better job than just more hours. We can all mostly agree that training through the commercial ticket is standardized and relatively the same no matter where you train. However, from 250hrs-1500hrs the experience differs widely. One can simply fly sky divers or rent an aircraft and fly it till the wings fall off to get to their 1500 mark. There is no increased CRM training or airline training. This is an "out" for the airlines. The faa and NTSB are simply blaming the pilots for these accidents without covering everything else you mentioned. The pilots in the buffalo Colgan crash would meet today's minimum requirements. So if I fly a c152 around for the next 1200hrs, what makes me better off then the first officer in the buffalo crash? Nothing!

In my opinion, the airlines need to take more responsibility in training pilots. I feel that it would be safer to take a fresh commercial pilot and stick him in "GOOD" airline training. Rather than let him fly a 152 in circles developing poor habits that may be hard to shake at the airline level.

Other industries do this all the time. They would rather have someone with less experience so they can train them the way THEY want and not get someone with poor habits.

Other countries do this. It seems to be working.

Does anyone know the accident stats for other countries compared to the US in commercial aviation? Per capita?
 
Get-home-itis said:
For what it's worth, at The Delta a call for 'Go Around' by any Flight Crewmember must be honored. However, the decision to reject a takeoff is the sole responsibility of the Captain

The verbage for these two concepts are on back-to-back pages in the FOM, so the difference between the two is pretty stark.
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I'm guessing that's because the captains have control of the thrust levers prior to V1?

A go around has to be initiated if either the PM or PD calls it at my shop.

It would be kind of ridiculous to ignore it. The other guy may assume it's for one thing and it might actually be for "that truck on the runway".
 
MikeD said:
We're looking at this different. I'm not referring to "bad" applicants or guys who are negatively contributing (or rather detracting) from CRM because they don't want to or don't care to contribute. I'm talking an analysis of how CRM......the team.....is affected by the honest and unintentional mistakes made by each crewmember individually and why the mistake(s) was/were made. Similarly, with regards to the other crewmember, why did he/she go with that mistake......where was their surety level at the time as either the PF or the PM?

I'm looking at this from the straightforward "how did the mistake happen" on the parts of the individual, then how did that affect the team/CRM? Obviously these guys are competent (they're not landing at wrong airports daily or really ever), they're intelligent, many have a large number of hours either in the operation, the aircraft, and/or with total time; so what contributed to the collective errors that convinced them that they were honestly doing the right thing and going to the correct place, when they arrived at a wrong airport? Complacency? Fatigue? Corporate or training culture? CRM culture? Rank/hierarchy pressure? Any or all combinations?

Once it can be understood why the individual made the honest mistake they did and how their particular mistake.....whether PF who was flying the plane, or PM who was backing him up...contributed to the whole; then the CRM issues for that particular incident can be much more fully understood. And contributions will be from both sides, as there are two roles in the cockpit, both of which make up the team up front. Good guys made a mistake; I'm interested in breaking down the why to the individual parts, not for punitive purposes, but for better understanding of the human factors aspect, which is ever evolving and always has something new that we may not yet know or be aware of.

I fully agree with you when it comes talking about bad apples and how culture should weed them out at places with a good culture that people would want to work for.
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Mike, I think you are getting to far in the weeds about the 'why' of individual mistakes here in the CRM concept. Honestly, it doesn't matter. The aircraft could be in an unsafe state and needs to be corrected.

Look at the Colgan accident, and the Asiana accident. A 'why' of at least one of the mistakes in both accident is the fact that you had a crew member who was new to the airplane. Can we ever change that concept? No, we are always going to have pilots new to airplanes. To fix that, as a crew you must understand and manage that there is a threat of more mistakes because of the newer crew member. On both of these flights it wasn't managed properly and look what happened.

Now, contrast that to the USAirways incident in the Hudson. The First Officer who was the pilot flying at the time the birds hit the aircraft, was also new to the Airbus. Sully knew that, took control of the aircraft and had the FO run the checklists as he was 'fresher' running them as he recently completed the training cycle. The situation was managed better as Sully didn't even allow for a mistake to be made by the newer crew member and used that potential threat as a strength.
Personally speaking, even though I have flown with a lot of guys who have flown the 737 for decades, I went through training right as a lot of procedural changes were made. 99% of the guys I fly with, recognize, that and say in their briefing that 'you have more instruction with the new changes, if I am doing something wrong, please correct me'. So even though I am newer to the airplane than they were, they recognize the fact that I got more sim training with the new changes and they want to make sure I am not afraid to correct them if I see something that is wrong. Once again, that manages any potential individual mistake from both crew members a lot better than trying to think of ways to catch and prevent individual mistakes. Yes, those individual mistakes are going to happen, we need to learn from them, but we can't learn from everyone that has been made in the past, so let us manage potential ones before they occur.
 
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jgheggie said:
Maybe I am a little biased, having low time myself. But, the 1500hr rules seems like a cover up for some of the older listed accidents, rather than a solution. As you said, better CRM training and company culture would have done a better job than just more hours. We can all mostly agree that training through the commercial ticket is standardized and relatively the same no matter where you train. However, from 250hrs-1500hrs the experience differs widely. One can simply fly sky divers or rent an aircraft and fly it till the wings fall off to get to their 1500 mark. There is no increased CRM training or airline training. This is an "out" for the airlines. The faa and NTSB are simply blaming the pilots for these accidents without covering everything else you mentioned. The pilots in the buffalo Colgan crash would meet today's minimum requirements. So if I fly a c152 around for the next 1200hrs, what makes me better off then the first officer in the buffalo crash? Nothing!

In my opinion, the airlines need to take more responsibility in training pilots. I feel that it would be safer to take a fresh commercial pilot and stick him in "GOOD" airline training. Rather than let him fly a 152 in circles developing poor habits that may be hard to shake at the airline level.

Other industries do this all the time. They would rather have someone with less experience so they can train them the way THEY want and not get someone with poor habits.

Other countries do this. It seems to be working.

Does anyone know the accident stats for other countries compared to the US in commercial aviation? Per capita?
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Here is the thing with the 1500 hour rule. They are looking at it that it will allow a foundation of experience to be developed that will allow pilots to transition to an ATP Certificate holder. As you gain the experience to 1500 hours, you will be faced with situations were you need to make a command decision, manage a potentially dangerous situation, and go out and learn based upon a variety of situations.

Contrast that to the 'ab-initio' programs you are talking about were learning is in a controlled environment. Yes, it usually works, but when a situations presents itself outside of the box, such as shooting a visual approach into SFO without any vertical guidance, the pilot can't think. The closest thing we have here in the states is the PFT scheme we had at Gulfstream. The Captain of the Pinnacle flight that stalled went there, the Comair FO went there, and the Captain of the Colgan accident went there. Is it ironic or is there something more there? I think it is something more.
 
Since you seem to be very well versed with CRM @Seggy, what is your opinion on the first officer being able to call an abort on takeoff.
 
Seggy said:
Here is the thing with the 1500 hour rule. They are looking at it that it will allow a foundation of experience to be developed that will allow pilots to transition to an ATP Certificate holder. As you gain the experience to 1500 hours, you will be faced with situations were you need to make a command decision, manage a potentially dangerous situation, and go out and learn based upon a variety of situations.

Contrast that to the 'ab-initio' programs you are talking about were learning is in a controlled environment. Yes, it usually works, but when a situations presents itself outside of the box, such as shooting a visual approach into SFO without any vertical guidance, the pilot can't think. The closest thing we have here in the states is the PFT scheme we had at Gulfstream. The Captain of the Pinnacle flight that stalled went there, the Comair FO went there, and the Captain of the Colgan accident went there. Is it ironic or is there something more there? I think it is something more.
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I suppose that makes sense. I did not know the cap went to gulfstream.
 
jgheggie said:
Rather than let him fly a 152 in circles developing poor habits that may be hard to shake at the airline level.
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If someone got their 1500 hours by flying circles in a 152 building bad habits, for one thing they aren't going to have the rest of the ATP requirements (instrument, night, x-c) for the rule met and for another they won't be able to hack it in a 121 training program. There is this prevalent stereotype among people who did not build time CFI-ing that all you do is laps around the pattern in piston singles on CAVU days, but that is not at all what my CFI experience was like, and I'd venture to say that the same is true for many of the others in here who got their time CFI-ing.

Other countries do this. It seems to be working.

Does anyone know the accident stats for other countries compared to the US in commercial aviation? Per capita?
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Worked out pretty awesome for Asiana.
 
TEM/CRM training is a big focus at my company both in the classroom and during sim training. We'll spend an entire day devoted to it during ground school, and we have an appendix in the SOP devoted to TEM. It was my understanding that this was an industry wide effort already.
 
Seggy said:
Mike, I think you are getting to far in the weeds about the 'why' of individual mistakes here in the CRM concept. Honestly, it doesn't matter. The aircraft could be in an unsafe state and needs to be corrected. .
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It actually does matter in order to improve CRM as a whole. I'm not talking as something is happening, I'm talking as an academic learning point post-incident, in order to improve CRM as a whole down the road. There's always learning to be had from analyzing the "why" of individual mistakes after the fact. Sure, in the situation you do what needs to be done, but we're talking post-analysis here....or at least I'm talking post-analysis.
 
Seggy said:
but when a situations presents itself outside of the box, such as shooting a visual approach into SFO without any vertical guidance, the pilot can't think.
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Wait, is that "out of the box" now? A visual approach with *jarring minor chord* NO VERTICAL GUIDANCE?

I liked the rest of your post so much that I started wondering exactly who you are and what you've done with Seggy.
 
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