Crew resource management

The captain was unable to simply listen in and understand what the first officer and air traffic control were saying to each other, so his mental picture of what was going on would come entirely from the first officer.

Nowadays, such issues are mitigated by the existence of a Crew Resource Management, or CRM, training programme, which trains pilots to work together to effectively manage their workload, and to catch any developing issues before they snowball into an emergency.

But CRM training was not yet the industry standard in 1990, and Avianca didn't have such a programme.

Whether or not a particular crew worked well together was entirely dependent on how those individual personalities got on.

Pilots are now required to explicitly declare a fuel emergency using Mayday when they need immediate priority, eliminating ambiguous language like low on fuel.

Air traffic controllers must now proactively confirm distress signals and relay fuel critical status across sectors to ensure priority handling.

Crew resource management training became mandatory following the incident, emphasising assertive communication and decision making, while fuel management training now includes strict thresholds for emergency declarations.

Airlines around the world have since revised their fuel reserve policies, ensuring that final reserves are untouchable, except in emergencies.

What's more, the fact that there were potentially as much as four pilots in the cockpit at the time means that this was not likely a simple case of bad flying by one pilot.

Rather, it indicates that a much broader issue is at play, involving grossly lacking crew resource management.

All of what we know so far about this incident points back to the training culture within the airline, and even within the industry more generally.

This problem of automation dependence is compounded by the fact that long-haul pilots perform far fewer takeoffs and landings per month than short-haul pilots.

If anything like the scenarios presented in this episode turn out to be accurate, then serious problems with pilot training and company safety culture are to blame for this close call.

Emirates has an excellent safety record and is one of the most rigorous pilot selection and training processes in the world.

Its fleet is highly modern and well maintained, but cracks are beginning to show in this crucial area of automation dependence and crew resource management.

This was far from the first incidents of its kind at Emirates.

What do you think, like, d- I mean, obviously you talk about, like, CRM and, you know, um, trying to, uh, you kinda get a feel for the other guy.

I wonder if there's any crew resource management, like, where you're kind of working as a team with the other guy.

I wonder if anything will come out with this later that they're, the, the captain noticed something was off with the first officer, or if he played it cool, or if anybody else was cued into him having some strange behavior, you know, making- Well, as far as I know, they're both a- the, the captain and the first officer are still alive.

You know, I think the captain was very critical, so hopefully he does make it through.

And I'm like, yes, that is what I should do.

So that's part of, we've talked about it last week, the crew resource management, it goes both ways.

Right.

And you got to be open enough.