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Essay on Crew Resource Management (Aviation)

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In this day 'Crew Resource Management' (CRM) is strongly evident within the aviation industry. Having developed a positive reputation over the years of its application, it is highly recognised as an icon for safety practices among many major operators. Airline operators and wider aviation industries adopt CRM, on a global scale, to attain the desired goal of influencing flight crew members to operate more safely and effectively as one co-operative unit (rather than as individuals). The positive application of crew resource management envisages minimised risks and consequently, safer skies for all. One common definition of CRM can be …show more content…

Fifty seconds after reaching their assigned altitude, Captain Loft required First Officer Stockstill's assistance in removing the nose-wheel indicator light assembly -to investigate the likeliness of a blown light bulb and hence, instructed him to engage the autopilot at 2000 feet. For the next eighty seconds the plane maintained level flight. Then it dropped one hundred feet (30 m), and then again flew level for two more minutes, after which it began a descent so gradual it could not be perceived by the crew. In the next seventy seconds, the plane lost only 250 feet (76 m), but this was enough to trigger the altitude warning C-chord chime located under the engineer's workstation. The engineer (or Second Officer) had gone below deck following Loft's instructions, and there was no indication by the pilot's voices recorded on the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) that the warning chime was acknowledged. In another fifty seconds, the plane was at half its assigned altitude. The CVR recorded the last few moments of conversation between the crew, acknowledging the change in altitude: Stockstill: We did something to the altitude. Loft: What? Stockstill: We're still at 2,000 feet, right? Loft: Hey — what's happening here? (NTSB, 1973) Official observations find a probable cause of this accident to be the insufficiencies of flight crew to properly monitor flight instruments

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