CRM or Fly-By-Mouth. I would appreciate readers experience on this subject.
As a simulator instructor I train pilots from many different airlines. Every operator has its own SOP’s usually based upon the aircraft manufacturers recommendations. They vary from airline to airline. A recent episode reminded me of that apocryphal story about two pilots talking about their work. One says what is your job in the airline? The other replies he is the captain’s sexual advisor.
“What do you mean by that?
“Every time I make a suggestion to the captain he says “if I want your
advice, I’ll ask for it”. Maybe there is a slight element of truth about that.
I was operating the instructor panel for a hiring company charged with assessing several foreign 737 captains for contract work with a Japanese LLC. All spoke English with varying degrees of proficiency but had never met before being paired up on the day of the simulator session, which consisted of several circuits. The assessors were two senior captains from the airline. One spoke no English. The second assessor had very limited English language skills. On this occasion an Eastern European captain acting as support pilot, was continually advising, leading and prompting his colleague in the left seat from take off to touch down. It must have been most distracting to the pilot trying to gauge his distance abeam the runway while flying the 737 as best he could and saddled with a verbose stranger in the RH seat. Now I have been around for a long time and I can’t remember hearing such non-stop garbage.
At the end of the session we adjourned for a debrief and coffee. I whispered to the chief assessor that the fly-by-mouth pilot would need pulling into line. Perhaps because his own English was limited the assessor hadn’t a clue what the motor-mouth was saying. Instead he replied that he and his non-English speaking colleague were very impressed by the copilots excellent CRM in his support calls to the pilot flying. The fact they hadn’t understood a thing the co-pilot was saying meant nothing to them as long as the co-pilot was continually “advising” the captain.
I observed another crew in the simulator. The captain was undergoing his instrument rating renewal. It was soon apparent the co-pilot was leading the captain by changing important MCP selections without being asked as well as “advising” him when to turn inbound from a manually flown raw data holding pattern and ILS. “Looking good Jack – bring it around a few degrees and she’ll be right. Slightly high on glide slope – you need to get it down a bit. I’ll give you landing flap now. Speeds good. Watch the power.” Ad nauseum. Meanwhile the captain said nothing and did his own thing while staying commendably calm despite his copilot’s more or less constant chatter.
Half way into the ILS, I felt compelled to stop the simulator and told the co-pilot to stick to his company SOP calls applicable to the instrument approach and stop coaching the captain or the rules meant I would cancel the instrument rating test. The co-pilot protested that he was supporting the PF by good CRM. He could not see it was nothing more than back seat driving. Later I asked the captain how he felt about the steady commentary from the RH seat. The captain replied it was annoying but he was used to it since it was company policy to encourage copilots to help the captain and that included reading a checklist or a heading or a configuration without waiting for directions from the captain. In all fairness it is often the captain that is guilty of hammering a co-pilot with unwanted advice. The co-pilot becomes captive audience to seniority.
If that is supposed to represent good CRM then it has gone too far. Fly-by-mouth is a more apt term. Rather than a professional cockpit atmosphere where one pilot flies and the other monitors and carries out directions, the original concept of CRM has deteriorated into the farcical situation where some PM’s (whether a captain or first officer) lack the discipline needed to keep their mouth shut (unless safety dictates) while the other is flying. When company mandated SOP support calls become nothing more than an excuse for back seat driving, then the flight safety importance of a disciplined flight deck goes out the window.
