It is the duty of the commander of the aircraft to help the fo of any operation with the decision making processes that are required when moving from fo to captain. One of the major criticisms that I had of less experienced commanders, having been a trainer for many years. Is that they very quickly forget how it was to be an experienced fo! The frustrations involved in having basic decisions taken away by a control freak in the left hand seat. CRM aside, it is incumbent on any commander to help develop the skills of his/her less experienced collegue. This cannot be done if said pilot constantly interferes with routine decisions. The attitude should always be that of trying to develop good thought processes, the aircraft commander always always has a veto.
With that thought in mind, the fo who is allowed to develop those skills, will ultimately find the command course a doddle, and on reflection continue to then develop the skills of his less experienced collegues.
He will then be respected by his fellow crewmember enhancing CRM. Why do we find this concept so difficult.
Any command course that has a high failure rate,is flawed. Pandering only to the ego of whom ever had designed it , but is is highly questionable as to its cost effectiveness.
When long ago,in the airline a collegue of mine was working for, he had the temerity to ask the chief pilot where his command course was when offered a command,he was told in no uncertain terms that his four years in the right hand seat was his command course so
out of my office and stop wasting my time. The company concerned had an enlightened view towards development of fo's however.
This thread obviously indicates that we are not learning from past good practice.
