To: Eden
CRM (Cockpit Resources Management) was so I have heard was developed by United Airlines after several serious incidents. As I stated in a previous post my last contact with a pilot in an aircrew capacity was when I was a crew chief (plane captain) in the USCG and that was in the 50s. I had several brushes with danger where I had to tell the pilots they were placing the aircraft and crew in danger but my pleas to get them to take notice went unheeded. On one occasion, we were making a GCA into Corpus Christi Mainside and it was a hazy day. I was flying the panel and I looked to my left and saw a Navy JRB on a collision course. I used the intercom but the pilots didn’t pay any attention due to the GCA operators conversation with the pilots.. The other aircraft was making an instrument approach to Cabanis Field and he was obviously under the hood. I contacted the pilots twice more to no avail. I then hit the command over ride on the intercom but it was not until the other guys’ GCA operator saw us and our GCA operator saw him before the pilots took notice. We were both ordered to take evasive action and we missed by about 500 feet. So much for CRM.
Regarding your safety when flying in an aircraft that I had maintained you would be very safe, as I would be sitting very close to you. In the Coast Guard at that time if you fixed it you flew in it. I worked both on fixed wing as well as rotary wing aircraft and I learned to fly everything I fixed. The only thing I could not do in a helicopter was to hover over a fixed point.
Regarding CRM for the lack of a better acronym, in my line of work, I have to not only face it I have to implement it. When I go on a consulting assignment I get hit with a lot of animosity. First of all I come into the work environment to mainly clean up the work that had been done or to do the work that is yet to be done. That’s the first hurdle. The second is that I make in some cases twice what the other employees are making. It is my responsibility to establish the relationship and to prove that I am not going to make the employees look bad. In fact I try very hard to train them in the techniques necessary to do a good job and in a lot of cases I do the job and give them the credit. When I finish a job whether it was a 3-year assignment or a six-week assignment, when I leave, the individuals I worked with are sorry to see me go. So, CRM works
However, it does not work at all on this forum.
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The Cat
[This message has been edited by Lu Zuckerman (edited 31 January 2001).]