I’ve always loved behind-the-scenes stories. That means I almost always buy the “special features” version of movies and, in my youth, I made quick work of books like Arthur Hailey’s 1960s classics Hotel and (of course) Airport. These days, I relish hearing the stories that my significant other, a part 121 airline captain, dishes out from his workday in the pointy end of the airliner. There are never names — I wouldn’t remember them anyway — but he has a knack for painting vividly colorful word portraits of the astonishing range of humanity he encounters in airports and airplanes. I regard it as more evidence of what I call the “ubiquity of uniquity,” an alliterative restatement of Star Trek science officer Spock’s Vulcan IDIC philosophy.

The Not-So-Secret Sauce

But just like the super-diverse Star Trek crews, the airline crewmembers I hear about combine their strengths and their unique characteristics to form a single, smooth-operating team. That doesn’t happen by accident or by magic. A well-known team-development sequence describes the progression from “forming” to “storming,” “norming,” and (finally) “performing.” Flight crews skip the “storming” part entirely. Carefully developed Standard Operating Procedures, or SOPs, are the not-so-secret sauce, the norms that enable total strangers to meet at the airport, form themselves into a crew, and use the norms to perform smoothly from the get-go.

The recent passing of Captain Al Haynes has put those SOPs, which broadly include some of the resource management topics we’ve explored in this issue, back in the news at the time of this writing. Even if you weren’t yet on the planet in July 1989, you have undoubtedly heard the story — and perhaps seen some of the YouTube videos and animated recreations — of United 232’s fiery arrival in Sioux City after a catastrophic engine failure left the DC-10 with no hydraulics. It might have been the first time many people heard of Crew Resource Management (CRM), which by then had been airline SOP for less than a decade. I was privileged to hear Captain Haynes give his behind-the-scenes perspective on two occasions, and he never failed to talk about the vital role that effective CRM played in saving many lives that day. It wasn’t just the flight deck crew, augmented by an off-duty United check airman who offered assistance. It was also the way the cabin crew, air traffic controllers, and well-trained airport first responders worked smoothly together to minimize loss of life in a seemingly impossible situation.

The more recent story of Cactus 1549 — aka “Miracle on the Hudson” — is yet another famous example of CRM in action. As with United 232, the Cactus 1549 team included not just the now-famous flight deck crew, but also flight attendants, ATC, and first responders.

Both United 232 and Cactus 1549 are a long way from the earliest days of aviation, when daredevils and lone eagle flights were celebrated, and air-line SOP was the gear-up-and-shut-up crew culture of the so-called “skygod” era. As a frequent airline passenger, I am extremely grateful to benefit from the development of better and safer practices. As a GA pilot, I am also extremely grateful for the way that so many of these practices have been adapted for, and adopted by, pilots who fly in less capable airplanes and without the help of an on-board crew.

As we have explored in this issue, there is infinite diversity in infinite combinations of pilots, airplanes, environmental conditions, and crews. But may we all resolve always to come together on the team for safety. (FAA Safety Briefing – NovDec 2019)