Human facors - sarcasm on the flight deck
A recent accident report from Asia pin-pointed the boorish behaviour by the captain towards his first officer, as a contributory factor leading to the eventual crash of an A320 into terrain during a circling approach. The report stated the captain had put down the F/O and been continually sarcastic while questioning the F/O on technical questions in the early part of the flight. The accident report is covered elsewhere on Pprune forums.
I am guessing that few airline operators bite the bullet of cockpit etiquette during the induction phase of new pilots to the airline. Of course there are lectures on the regulatory requirements of Human factors and CRM and other favourite power point subjects -but precious little else on human relations.
Captains and copilots come in all shapes and sizes in the cockpit and often with widely different personalities and in most parts learn to live with the person in the other seat for the duration of the flight.
What prompts the title subject of this post is a minor human factors event in the cockpit of a airliner that occurred some months ago. After hearing the story I tried to visualise the situation from both the captain and first officer's viewpoint and wondered how I would have dealt with it. I am interested in reader's opinions - and please this must not turn into a captain or copilot bashing fest
Captain offers the first officer the first leg of four hours. F/O acknowledges and the flight proceeeds normally up to the time the captain sees thunderstorms on radar 100 miles ahead across the planned track and realises a diversion around them is on the cards. The captain assesses it would be better to make a early diversion necessitating a minor heading change rather than a late diversion with greater heading changes.
F/O is PF and so far has made no indication of studying the position of the storms on radar. Captain calls ATC and requests diversion left of track to avoid weather. ATC gives approval. The captain directs the F/O to turn left on to a specified heading.
"The F/O looks over at the captain and says "So you are taking over control, are you?"
The captain nonplussed at this perceived sarcastic remark, asked the F/O what he was getting at?
The F/O replied that as it was his leg he should be the one to make any decision to divert and in his opinion there was no need to divert so early until a closer to the storm front.
Now I won't discuss the captain's reply but putting yourself in the captain's position how would you have reacted? Did the F/O have a valid point in that he was PF at the time? Or did he exceed the bounds of commonsense and good manners under the situation? Or should he have accepted without comment the captain's direction to turn. Clearly the diversion was no big deal in itself; but it only takes one questionable reaction to the captain's authority to arouse a flash of resentment which can linger for much longer than the perpetrator may realise. Or maybe the captain was too thin-skinned and should have laughed off the F/O's sarcasm?
And should flight deck etiquette be a subject for discussion at crew induction classes? Comments invited.