He mentioned the raft exercise that Australian Airlines and Qantas did
which is based in a real pool with a role play based on an in-flight
emergency and ditching. A number of crew members are given characters to
play while others simply play passengers. The results were pretty
impressive in terms of opening up the communication channels between the
two groups. The crucial part was that once everyone had got in the raft,
the rain started - COLD WET RAIN! and only the Flight Attendants knew how
to get the roof up. You have never seen the tech crew (flight crew)
communicate so well as pilots don't like getting cold and wet. It subtly
made the very important point that there are some key areas of knowledge
that each group holds and in different situations, one will be more
applicable than the other.
The other thing that would be of interest to any organisational
psychologists was that the exerice worked far better in the round rafts
where someone could establish a central command point, than the B747 slide
rafts where two groups formed with slightly different ideas.
It was a really valuable exercise - you only needed to look at the
difference in communication before and after.
Hope this helps too!
Graham
PS If there is anyone out there wondering whether its worth doing a PhD -
spare a thought for me swimming round pools with a dozen gorgeous flight
attendants. Mmm! The things we do for science eh?
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)