Britannia Airways (UK's largest Charter Carrier operating B757 / 767) has
run an 'Integrated Crew Training Course' for the last few years at its East
Midlands Training Centre. All Tech Crew (Flight Deck Crew) and Flight
Attendants pass through the course which is either 1 or 2 days depending on
each year's topic. The CRM Development Pilot is;
Captain George Robertson
CRM Development Pilot
Britannia Airways Limited
London Luton Airport
Bedfordshire
England
LU2 9ND
George is one of God's Gentlemen and I know he has a great team up there. I
have had some involvement with them over the last few years and was really
impressed by their course. One of their achievements was in selecting some
technical areas to brief the flight attendants on so that not only would
they be assertive enough to communicate problems that they saw, but they
could communicate them in technical terms. (I remember Rebecca Chute and
Melisa Dunbar referring to the United 232 incident where the flight
attendant referred to the horizonal stabilizer as the 'back wing' etc.)
They key is to impart knowledge that is useful and doesn't fall into the
category of 'a little knowledge being a dangerous thing'. Britannia used
the Dryden video that was made by Australian Airlines to show that not only
should the flight attendant have voiced the fears of the passengers, but
should also have realised that snow on the wings might not 'just blow off
on take-off'. Their objective was NEVER to say that the flight attendant at
Dryden should have known better, but to recognise that she did not have as
much information as she could have had to her job and their ICT course was
one way to add to the defences.
Britannia's other challenege in extending CRM to include Flight Attendants,
was the relatively high turnover of staff on account of them being a
charter carrier. Although there is a core staff, there are a lot of extras
taken on seasonal contracts over the summer which is not the same with
Scheduled Carriers.
Hope this helps
Graham R. Braithwaite
Research Associate
Department of Aviation
University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052
Australia
Tel. + 61 (0) 2 9385 2806 (work)
Tel. + 61 (0) 2 9314 5061 (home)
Fax. + 61 (0) 2 9385 1072 (work)