20.1: Crew Resource Management
Every airline will have its own Crew Resource Management Initiatives as part of their airline policy. As the name suggests, "Crew" resource management is not restricted to solely cabin crew or flight crew. The objective of CRM is to continually enhance the communications between all crew members.
CRM initiatives are to promote the safe operation of flights, by promoting efficient communicationand minimizing the risk of human error.
The outcome of CRM is to maintain a high level of competency in all crew members, and assist in managing all available resources as effectively and efficiently as possible, including technical resources, personnel, as well as passengers on-board a flight.
Human factors and past incidents will be used in CRM as they provide real life scenarios that all airline crews can learn from. Any errors will lead to the corrective measures that need to be taken to minimize the risk of harm to crew members, and passengers on-board a flight. Communication is at the core of crew resource management, and the best communication technique to remember is using the ABC technique.
This is the same principle the SCCM will use in the preflight briefing:
1.Appropriate
2.Brief
3.Concise
In practice, if a cabin crew member were to see smoke, they would not report to the flight crew that there's a fire on-board the aircraft. They would report to the flight crew that there's "smoke" visible, the area it's visible in and the effect it's having on passengers, as well as the colour of the smoke present.
All communications must be appropriate to the situation at hand, which will involve situational awareness. Keeping the communications brief, with only pertinent information conveyed avoids unnecessary information being relayed. It also increases the chance of giving the flight crew more time to analyse the situation, so they can adopt the flight plan accordingly.
In order to take the most appropriate decisions, the flight crew needs to know the "concise" information that will directly influence the decisions they need to make. In essence, crew resource management aims to bring all crew members together, so they are working in synergy with one goal: a safe flight. This means there needs to be one team working together to achieve that goal.
Each airline will have its own CRM programmes, and there will be refresher courses for cabin crew members to undertake. This ensures they're consistently updating their skills, which helps promote effective and decisive decision-making.
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