Thanks for the discusion. One Australian ATPL I interviewed for my work raised the locally famous case of QF 2- the uncontained A380 engine explosion out of Singapore. I quite like this event because it illustrates how experienced practitioners make a novel solution in a crisis that instantly improves years of Airbus design! In that instance the 50+ simultaneous alarm and subesuent reconfigurations setting off new alarms became part of the problem as much as part of the solution. In the end the Airbus crisis design got instantly replaced by a crew decision to run the ruler over the aircraft from the point of view of what was working rather than what was not working- immediatley reducing. a 50+ item problem to its more essential parts. But then thats good crew process and not really what my question asked.
I must say time limited and crisis type decision making tends to fall back onto simple naturalistic and innate styles of getting to the heart of the matter- that was the beauty of the Hudson landing. Also its been known that complex issues cant be worked through in a high stimulus environment, so anything that increases the stimulus will worsen the problem solving, and anything that simplifies the problem to its fundamentals will render it more readily solved under. the immense pressures of the occasion. Thats aons of human problem solving at work. Conversely, destimulating increases the chance of a solution being found- hence the highly professional calm of Sullenberger as an intentional crisis response, wheras adding to the complexity of the issues (read multiple alarms about unimportant things, low piority checks for a high priority probem) just adds to the risk.
In Capt. Sullenbergers case, there was only one solution, the execution of which required very timely and proficient exclusion of the diminishing options.
As an aside, i did think that AF 447 crew may have collectivly suffered from some degree of "pitch up" illusion as the preoccupation with concerns about overspeed seemed to capture the groupthink of the moment. There has never been any mention of this possibility in the BEA report despite the aircraft being at outrageous nose high attitude for much of its final few moments. Not much use for CRM if an entire crew becomes confused- one pilot flying a sensible power and attitude setting would have done it.
Last edited by Mimpe; 18th Mar 2013 at 13:38.