Re: Husband and wife teams on the flight deck
Reid Fairburn (cr_king_at_seanet.com)
Sat, 18 Apr 1998 10:05:35 -0700 (PDT)
At 01:38 PM 4/18/98 +0400, you wrote:
>
>Hi all!
>
>Having just recently subscribed to the group, I am impressed with the
>level of expertise of the contributors. I am just sorry I have missed
>the past year!
>
>I would appreciate a few comments on what has become a very sticky issue
>with me. In short, my wife and I were both employed as pilots by my
>present company. I am employed s a Training Captain, and my wife as a
>First Officer, both on the A340. After a period of some two months
>flying together as a crew, the company suddenly forbade us to fly
>together on the flight deck. The reason given by the Chief Safety
>Officer was that our flying together "does not give him a warm feeling
>in his stomach". Period.
>
>Short of court action, we have had no recourse but to accept Management
>ruling. I have done some research into the issue and can find very
>little evidence of any research done on the pros and cons of a husband
>and wife operating together in an environment such as a cockpit. I have
>flown with her for 10 years in total, and believe that our marital
>status has a positive effect on our operation rather than all the
>negatives portrayed by the Safety Officer.
>
>Can anyone help with research information?
>
>Thanks
>
>Mike Malherbe
>
>
=====I really don't have any hard data on this but I would tend to agree
with your management. It seems I have heard a few tales or two about
aggressive interaction between the two positions when the realtionship was
more than a crew. The aggressive actions were not nice and caused some
degree of airplane loss of control due to violence. I do think that this is
very dependent on the mental attitudes of the two persons involved and it
would be very hard to judge fairly without knowing the emotional makeup of
the two. I would interpret the actions of your management as an all
encompassing prevention action just in case.
Reid Fairburn
Creative Kingdom, Inc.
cr_king_at_seanet.com
253-946-9455/4815