Which is more important - super accurate ‘Standard Calls’ or CRM?
The reason I ask is that I’ve worked in two different types of airline. One with excellent CRM (but not so rigid adherence to STD Calls), and one which at least pushes rigid STD Calls but has crap CRM.
What I found was the team with good CRM were always great at trapping errors.
With the other lot, the ‘enforcement’ of petty SOPs (Clear LeftSIDE, not Clear Left!) had awful CRM, and silly mistakes were common.
I quickly realised that this obsession with ‘the mouth music’ was often in fact just a weak pilots way of proving his ‘ability’.
I flew with many FOs who treated these verbal gymnastics (check to the line/down to the line, whatever) as a competition. Most often these were the guys who had sat in the RHS a year or two longer than they felt they should, and you could feel the resentment oozing out of their every pore. They might have spent a week or two recently flying with a Captain who they felt ‘wasn’t as good as them’, and the frustration at their misfortune was palpable.
Their mouth music adherence had little to do with accuracy, it was intended to boost their fragile ego, and weaken and undermine the guy in the LHS. All done at the expense of the CRM in that cockpit.
I’m sure many Captains have met these types and faced such naked challenges to the cockpit gradient. A basic breakdown of CRM.
I sat in a Jumpseats once and watched an FO playing that game, until the Captain blew his top and issued a screaming tirade at the (suddenly cringing) FO. And that was just the Before Takeoff Checklist! Nice way to start a 14 hour night flight.
Seriously - there are bigger threats to safety than a less than perfect checklist responses.
Think about keeping the lines of communication open first.