Your South American perspective on CRM and Human Factors is a valuable
addtion to our increasingly international group. Thank you for sharing
your expertise with us.
You wrote:
...
> I believe the CRM enterprise is aimed to cultural, attitude and behavioral
> changes, a very slow and persevering jog, and since those variables are very
> much under the influence of the commander personality style and the
> organizational "mood" these items also should be adressed in one way or
> another, and in these cases "metrics" are very unlikely to perform due to
> the comlexity of the first item and the variability of the second one.
>
>
> 3. MANAGERS MUST BE INCLUDED IN OUR PROGRAMMES...
> 30 days ago, a cargo B-707 suffered a CFIT Class A accident approaching to
> Ezeiza International Airport (Buenos Aires... yes, you're right, that is
> located in the darkside of the world). Nothing new, except that 15 days
> earlier we had finished the awareness step seminar in that military unit...
> but... oldtimers commanders didn't attend, and particularly the pilot
> involved in this accident, which was the chief and instructor pilot for the
> type.
>
> Preliminary info about the "active failures" (Reason) indicate several
> misunderstandings and lack of cooperation in a freezed cockpit. But the most
> important part here are the "latent pathogens" (Reason), i.e. cultural
> features, macho attitude, etc.
...
I agree with your comment about this being a slow process. As you
describe in your 707 accident, having participated in the training a few
weeks earlier did not make a large difference. CRM is truely a long
term process.
In addition to the management issues you are interested in, there are
issues relating to national culture, as well. Much of existing CRM
material has been developed in the North American cultural environment,
so we may not have a clear picture of how to get a REALLY effective
program implemented in other parts of the world. There are several
experts who can help us address cultural differences within this group.
Time to speak up, NASA/UT and others!
-- Best regards, Neil Krey neilkrey_at_why.net http://users.why.net/neilkrey/