Despite recent well-publicised tragedies, air travel still remains by far the safest mode of transport. Air safety is no happy fluke; it exists in a large part due to rigid processes that are reviewed and improved regularly and on-going training of all of those employed within the industry. It is this type of training that today’s blog focuses on.
At 11.42 p.m. on December 29th 1972, an Eastern Air Lines Lockheed Tristar jet Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing 101 people. 75 people survived the crash. The circumstances that surrounded this disaster centre on the leadership qualities of Captain Robert Albin 'Bob' Loft, 55, who was in charge of the aircraft.
On approaching Miami International Airport, the crew lowered the landing gear. After lowering the gear, the First Officer noticed that the landing gear indicator, a green light identifying that the nose gear is properly locked in the "down" position, did not illuminate. This was later discovered to be due to a burned out light bulb.
What then occurred on the flight deck caused the crash; the Captain became obsessed with the reasons why the bulb had not illuminated and drew the rest of the flight crew into the investigation, becoming pre-occupied with the failure of a £2.50 bulb. During this time, the autopilot had inadvertently been switched off and none of the crew had noticed the fact that the aircraft was slowly descending.
The ‘black box’ flight recorders enabled accident investigators to piece together what had happened. The National Transportation Safety Board’s report concluded that pilot error was the cause of the accident, specifically: "the failure of the flight crew to monitor the flight instruments during the final four minutes of flight, and to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. Preoccupation with a malfunction of the nose landing gear position indicating system distracted the crew's attention from the instruments and allowed the descent to go unnoticed."
This accident was the first that provided the catalyst for change in the airline industry. Following a similar accident involving a United Airlines DC8 in late 1978, the industry began to implement ‘CRM’ training (Crew Resource Management or Cockpit Resource Management). The training focused on culture change (moving away from the traditional autocratic, authoritarian Captain’s role), communication, assertiveness and teamwork. In addition, topics such as problem solving, and interpersonal skills were integrated into the training. United Airlines then included cabin crew staff into the training and by 1990 it had become a global standard.
It is of course tragic that it takes an event that causes a loss of life to drive change. In most modern businesses, because the stakes aren’t as high, poor leadership decisions and behaviour often take place because the leader has no awareness of the impact of their behaviour on other people and has not undertaken enough (or any) personal development in the sort of topics covered in CRM training. How many employees still have to endure a leadership style that equates to obsessing about a £2.50 light bulb? The airline industry has in recent years been at the forefront of human behavioural training; because of this incidents like Flight 401 are happily very uncommon. Wouldn’t it be amazing if all businesses adopted the same approach to developing their employees and managers?