I would have been a believer that CRM was at play if the FO had been repositioned to the jump seat, the CC in the RHS so he can fly and manipulate the throttles without the delay in advice or interpretation to the control process. The FO was helpful in communications, but could have been doing that at another station.
Fair enough, but there are a couple of factors that precluded that arrangement.
Firstly, while I agree that the continued pressure on the PFCs had little to no effect due to total loss of hydraulic pressure, the crew (including Capt. Fitch) had no way of being certain that was the case. They may have been thinking of the Windsor incident, where there was some limited control available due to the fact that not all the hydraulic connections were severed - as far as they were concerned, the PFC input plus using asymmetric thrust was what was keeping them stable. First order of business - don't do anything that might make it worse!
Secondly, both Captains Fitch and Haynes have stated numerous times that because the failure of engine 2 had caused its thrust lever to jam in position, manipulating the thrust levers from either seat was very difficult. In fact it was Fitch watching Haynes struggle to do so that led him to offer to take the throttles initially, as his position behind the console would allow unrestricted access.
Even the JAL123 worked in a similar manner, with a far more critical control problem...
Agreed, however unlike UAL232 all of their thrust levers were working normally.
Assume that the Hudson submarine is also a "CRM" good show?
In the sense that "It was competently handled, and the decision making made in a time critical environment" (which is fundamentally all CRM should be about), yes. It just so happens that in that case the handling pilot had most of the requisite skillset to handle the problem (though he has always maintained that the whole crew deserved credit for the outcome).
The industry has taken the CRM mantra on for better or worse, as a potential enhancement in the areas related to human performance within a complex and close coupled task. The outcome has been that it has been considered we can take any person and run them through a CRM program and hey presto, achieve a competent crew member, don't have to teach them to even be able to fly, recognise or recover from a stall, or even remember that it is probably healthy to look occasionally at the airspeed indicator.
I don't see that, but as some are fond of observing, I'm not a line pilot.
If there are instances of airline management treating CRM as a substitute for handling skills, then it should be reported to the regulators, as that was never the intent.
...to grandiosely attribute the saves to CRM...
Please don't devalue Denny or Sully's skill as a pilot by calling their outcomes "shining examples of CRM".
I did not and would not do any such thing. The late Captain Fitch is a hero of mine - as are the rest of that crew, but you mentioned him specifically - and neither he nor Captain Sullenberger have ever so much as hinted that they deserve credit over and above their colleagues on the days in question.
In fact, I'd be willing to argue that it's more of a disservice to his memory to dispute his long-held and oft-stated opinion that the outcome on that day was a team effort.
These guys had the piloting skills before, during and after, (and in spite of) any CRM course they undertook.
In my humble opinion...
Understood, but that opinion seems to be predicated on the idea that the latter is intended to either obfuscate or otherwise supplant the former, which - in my opinion - is nonsense.
Not all CRM is the same, for sure - but at the end of the day it is only intended to be another tool in the line pilot's arsenal. Endlessly discussing issues while SA goes out the window is just as much bad CRM as the apocryphal dictatorial Captain shutting out the rest of their crew. United's implementation of CRM at the time of UA232 was called CLR and it was a much more hands-on and practical implementation of the idea than some others.
At the risk of sounding ephemeral, whilst "checking your ego at the door" can be considered a central plank of CRM (in fact I'd say it's central to Professionalism 101), it applies to the crew as a whole. If a junior pilot is being overbearing to the extent that it's detrimental to the success of the flight then that pilot is as guilty of violating the concept as would be the case if the roles were reversed.
Now - just to be crystal clear, I did not venture an opinion of my own that the UA232 CVR was "a shining example of CRM". I simply stated that I had read a statement which had been endorsed by others - namely that the UA232 CVR
(EDIT : which I know to contain content that is most certainly not "politically correct") contained a lot of what would be considered "good CRM". That statement was originally made by Robert McIntosh of the NTSB.