palgia
22nd Sep 2009, 23:35
Hello All,
I am pilot at a regional airline in the US currently on leave and working with the University of California, Berkeley on an organizational behavior research. We are looking at the recent increase in incident trends among regional carriers and evaluating the different leadership training programs at several of these airlines.
During some of our research, several individuals in my team (who have little knowledge of the aviation industry) were surprised to learn about the lack of peer evaluations among pilots. While first officers are evaluated by captains during their duties (in some airlines on an ongoing basis, while in the US it's usually limited to the probationary period), I am not aware of any programs that allow first officers to provide feedback to the captain.
Has anyone ever heard of a program under which after each flight ALL pilots provide a confidential evaluation on each other regarding some key parameters (CRM, decision making, SOP compliance, aircraft handling)? The idea is not for it to be punitive, but rather to collect a large number of data on each individual crew member that can be used for trend monitoring as well as training purposed during the LOFT scenarios. Of course the program would have to be structured in a similar fashion at the ASAP, where a representative of the pilot group would ensure the confidentiality of the data and any information passed on to the training department would have to be coded in an acceptable manner.
My first reaction to this idea was negative. However, after seeing how similar techniques are used in other industries, I am starting to see the potential value. It is normal for team members in business units to evaluate each other on an ongoing basis. Of course, there is always the risk of certain crew members leaving negative comments for retaliation or other factors, but once the volume of data is large enough, these isolated instances become less significant. The idea is to see trends from a large number of reports. On flight decks with more than 2 crew members, the data would be more interesting as it would offer multiple perspectives on the same person for the same flight.
I am curious to hear your opinions on a similar system being used on an aircraft's flight deck.
Thank you in advance for all your comments.
palgia
I am pilot at a regional airline in the US currently on leave and working with the University of California, Berkeley on an organizational behavior research. We are looking at the recent increase in incident trends among regional carriers and evaluating the different leadership training programs at several of these airlines.
During some of our research, several individuals in my team (who have little knowledge of the aviation industry) were surprised to learn about the lack of peer evaluations among pilots. While first officers are evaluated by captains during their duties (in some airlines on an ongoing basis, while in the US it's usually limited to the probationary period), I am not aware of any programs that allow first officers to provide feedback to the captain.
Has anyone ever heard of a program under which after each flight ALL pilots provide a confidential evaluation on each other regarding some key parameters (CRM, decision making, SOP compliance, aircraft handling)? The idea is not for it to be punitive, but rather to collect a large number of data on each individual crew member that can be used for trend monitoring as well as training purposed during the LOFT scenarios. Of course the program would have to be structured in a similar fashion at the ASAP, where a representative of the pilot group would ensure the confidentiality of the data and any information passed on to the training department would have to be coded in an acceptable manner.
My first reaction to this idea was negative. However, after seeing how similar techniques are used in other industries, I am starting to see the potential value. It is normal for team members in business units to evaluate each other on an ongoing basis. Of course, there is always the risk of certain crew members leaving negative comments for retaliation or other factors, but once the volume of data is large enough, these isolated instances become less significant. The idea is to see trends from a large number of reports. On flight decks with more than 2 crew members, the data would be more interesting as it would offer multiple perspectives on the same person for the same flight.
I am curious to hear your opinions on a similar system being used on an aircraft's flight deck.
Thank you in advance for all your comments.
palgia