Well done to all of you! I believe you are in the process of opening the
door to a new era in CRM Training. I have grappled with some of these ideas
myself for some time. I am delighted to see your thoughts on this subject.
Guy is right when he says that CRM has worn out its welcome. It is starting
to become stale and we need to address the next era before we lose
credibility.
Key's three ideas are useful. The first idea of providing crews with
carefully researched accidents during a refresher session is valuable.
(Crews love war staories) I suspect however that we spend too much time
telling crews how not to do things in respect of CRM behaviour. We then
reinforce this concept through the discussions on accidents. I think we
should try and balance this with examples of good CRM behaviour as Key
suggests in his third point. This is clearly difficult because no one
reports on safe flights (at least not in any meaningful depth in our part
of the world) and how good HF skills prevented an accident. I suspect we
have to become more creative in the simulator, make videos and provide
written material illustrating appropriate behaviour. I know it has been
done before but this sort of thing is not readily available. I have
recently asked two crews who have experienced problems which were very well
handled to jot their thoughts down on how they dealt with problem. I hope
to be able to write an article which focuses on the positive aspects of
their behaviour and then use this in conjunction with an appropriate
accident report during refresher sessions. The idea being to illustrate the
positive and negative aspects of HF skills / behaviour this way.
Do other airlines interview crews after successfully handling an emergency
situation? We have not done so before in my organisation.
The idea of an HF Skills observation checklist is a really great and I will
most certainly try and work this into our refresher sessions. I often get
the impression that many pilots often don't understand exactly what each
of these HF skills is or means. The use of a checklist will most certainly
help crews in this respect whilst reinforcing the important skills.
I suspect that the concept of an individual being responsible for his or
her own personal development is something that is only now starting to
become a reality in the airline environment possibly more so at our end of
the world (South Africa). The discussion on professionalism touched on this
subject. How does one encourage personal development in this environment? I
believe that from an airline point of view we have an obligation to create
the right environment for this development. How do we do it? I think some
answers may be found in Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline.
The burning question is where to now?
I welome any thoughts on these issues.
Brett