Problems that arise from cultural differences in flight crews
Good points Old Smokey.
Aloyscious, the standard response to cultural differences within a crew usually focuses on the issues associated with the different national cultures. However, just as important and sometimes more so, are the cultures associated with the organisation and the professional group. These may be loosely seen as safety culture and airmanship.
There have been many accidents that involved organisational and professional culture, but even in these events, the crew’s common national culture often played a major role. I have not had any experience of mixed national culture operations.
A landing over run resulted from the non-intervention by a training captain during a check ride. Although the training captain was the aircraft commander, the ‘student’ captain was more ‘senior’ in previous military service (possibly both were still in the reserve forces). The national culture rated military activity highly (high power distance); the organisational culture condoned the military attitudes and did not take CRM very seriously; professional culture was weak and biased by recruiting pilots from the ‘national’ military.
A near ditching incident resulted from multiple engine shutdowns due to abnormal indications. The organisational culture over focussed on low maintenance cost and had arbitrarily set lower max EGT limits. The crew believing that they had over temped the engines shut them down; both maintenance management and crew, lacked knowledge of the true limits and of allowable transient over temperature. Both crewmembers had the same professional culture with respect to following company guidelines irrespective of circumstance, thus no one intervened to prevent a hazardous situation developing.
A landing over run resulted from the Captain deciding when to apply the brakes and how much pressure to use on a wet runway, despite the manufactures advise to use maximum braking in limiting conditions. The operator management supported the Captains decision citing that he is the final judge for the operation the aircraft. The operational and professional cultures enabled captains to do as they please. The national culture tended towards machismo (masculine, high power distance), thus the first officer did not comment or intervene.
From the examples above, it is often the absolute culture – national, organisation, or professional that is more important for safe flight and rather than any difference in national culture.