Was it Dan Maurino that said something along the lines of;
'Human error is a symptom of system failure not the cause of it'
(Sorry if I got that wrong Dan)
I think that the rogue individuals fall in this category so the true
problem must lie in recruitment and / or training. As we are involved in ab
initio training of pilots at UNSW it is interesting to see just who our
students model themselves on. Someone might like to try this - we asked all
our flying students to bring in their favourite photo of an aircraft and
name their favourite five movies. With very little exception, they brought
in pictures of screaming, zooming fighters and named 'Top Gun' as one of
their favourite films. Now I am not going to dare to say that there is
anything wrong with that, but it is interesting to see what is going
through the minds of our future pilots. Has anybody tried examining the CRM
skills of 'Maverick' on Top Gun? (I am no military expert here so defer to
those who are). Tom Cruise's character may represent the perfect navy
fighter pilot (well may be!?) but all of the ab initios I have interviewed
want to fly commercial jets. The challenge for us as trainers is then to
'train out' some of this attitude - whilst making sure the recruits stay
keen, and, dare I say it, still have some fun.
Of course, our problem could be that we may be rogue recruiters?!
Regards,
Graham
Graham Braithwaite
Research Associate
UNSW Aviation
Sydney 2052
Australia
tel: +61 (0) 2 9385 2806 (work)
tel: +61 (0) 2 9314 5061 (home)
fax: +61 (0) 2 9385 1072 (work)
e-mail: groovy_at_alpha.maths.unsw.edu.au