More seriously, this is a complex issue, which does extend beyond the world
of aviation, believe it or not. My experience in working for a mid-sized
airline was that we had a couple in just this situation. While they had
been happily flying on different fleets for some time, one of the partners
organised a transfer so that they might crew together. After some debate,
our position was that this would not be allowed. This was not intended to
be a reflection on the character or stability of the relationship of the
couple in question, nor of their professionalism as aviators, although that
was how they chose to view it. Rather, it was a decision based on our
assessment of both safety considerations, and human resource management
issues.
Putting safety considerations aside for a moment, as a general HR principle,
most modern business practices do not allow couples to work together where
one partner is placed/may be placed in a position subordinate to the other
(whatever we may say about CRM, this still remains the case on all flight
decks I am aware of). The simple reason for this is that when the supervisor
is required to make any assessment of the performance of the supervisee,
there may be some doubt, or at least there may be perceived to be some
doubt, regarding the capacity of the assessor to maintain his or her
objectivity. The line is not drawn at spousal relationships. In large
organisations with good HR practices similar rules apply to other family
members (eg., father/son combinations, etc - unless they happen to be the
nepotistic owners of the business). Relating this to the cockpit, how
objective do we think a crewmember's incident report would be, following an
incident where the other partner misperformed his or her duties/violated
SOPs, or similar? More routinely, aircraft commanders are at times required
to make assessments of co-pilots with respect to matters such as "command
potential", etc. Again, objectivity may reasonably be called into question.
Returning to safety, even the best spousal relationships are susceptible to
occasional breakdowns in communication and cooperation (yes, as are all
relationships). As an example, I find it hard to believe that anyone out
there will not have experienced a stony wall of silence from a partner in
relation to a relatively minor domestic misunderstanding. What happens if
this occurs in or is carried into the cockpit? Stony walls of silence
between team members are not desirable in any safety critical situation.
These comments are not intended to reflect poorly on the professionalism of
aviators, or the quality of their relationships. No matter how professional
we are, how high our standards, the key to many mysteries of the human
factors domain is that we are, in the end, all human. (For now, at least...)
Brent
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Brent Hayward ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aviation Psychologist
e-mail: brent_at_melbpc.org.au Tel: +61 3 9690 4258; Fax: +61 3 9690 7070;
AAvPA web page: http://www.nasma.com/aavpa
__________ PO Box 217, Albert Park VIC 3206, Australia __________