Life Lessons From Cockpit

Another life lesson that I learned from the cockpit is about teamwork as practiced by the pilots and cabin crew, about how flight crews build the team and how they maintain team cohesiveness especially in an emergency situation.

In any organization or whenever we are involved in any group activities, working as a team is very important. Why is it important for pilots and cabin crew to work well as a team? Well, in aviation, studies have shown that a significant portion of accidents were caused by breakdown in teamwork, where crew members were working as individuals rather than as a team. And I am sure in life too a lot of failures that are encountered in reaching goals, making targets or simply abandoning a project is largely contributed to breakdown in teamwork. Let us now look at how pilots manage to build a good team and maintain that team cohesiveness.

• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Pilots and cabin crew do not fly with the same people all the time. They can be scheduled to fly with anybody and the bigger the crew population is, the lesser will be their chances of flying with the same people. Imagine having to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of so many individuals. Therefore, to prevent team members jostling for positions each time they fly, they have documented and defined the roles and responsibilities of team members. There is no dispute on who will be the leader for the flight and what roles the other team members play during normal conditions as well as in emergencies.

• Use of checklists. From the beginning to the end of the flight pilots refer to their checklists all the time. During non-normal situations, each pilot will be busy with his own designated tasks and there could be periods where the captain might not have the time to monitor his co-pilot. Therefore the use of checklists ensures all the required tasks are accomplished (without supervision) and who is supposed to accomplish a particular task.

• Training to enhance teamwork. Pilots continuously attend training sessions throughout their career. Apart from the twice yearly training to maintain and test their proficiency in flying a particular aircraft, pilots attend other training programs such as the crew resource management (CRM) training. All their training teaches and guides them to work well as a team and to further enhance teamwork by subjecting them to various non-normal situations that encourages them to use the team synergy to solve problems.

We can use the above examples and discipline used by pilots and other members of the flight crew in our daily life. It can be applied when working on a project in the office, when working with family members and anytime when we are in a team to further enhance teamwork and to help produce that winning team.

Written by Azharuddin Osman

Tags: checklists, Life Lessons from Cockpit, Pilots, roles and responsibilities, teamwork, Training

Flying is an exciting profession. Apart from the opportunity to see the world and staying in top rated hotels one could meet interesting personalities on board the aircraft and oftentimes experience challenging encounters that could test one’s patience and problem solving skills. On the positive side, such experiences could be used as lessons learned. I would therefore like to relate such an encounter that I had many years ago while I was flying the Fokker 27.

It was the start of a routine flight departing in the afternoon and scheduled to end in the evening just after sunset and I was the Captain of the flight. The flight schedule involved four transit stops before arriving at the destination.

As the aircraft was taxing for the take off position, one of the flight steward came on the cockpit-cabin interphone and reported that one of the passengers, a lady refused to fasten her seat belt and asked me what he should do as the said passenger just refused to listen to him. It is a requirement for the cabin crew to ensure that all passengers are strapped before take-off, therefore such behaviour could be an issue. I told the flight steward to order the passenger to buckle up and that if she refuses, to tell her that the Captain will turn the aircraft around, summon the security personnel and that she will be taken off the flight. The flight steward did as he was told and a few seconds later, he came over the flight intercom to report that the passenger still refused to fasten her seat belt.

I was in a dilemma. If I were to turn back, the flight would be delayed and I would have to skip some of the airfields as those airfields could only be operated during the day as they were not equipped for night operations. This would have inconvenienced quite a lot of the passengers who were bound for those affected airports. On the other hand I could not condone such behaviour on the flight as it is detrimental to flight safety. I had to think fast on my next move as there were other aircrafts waiting in line to depart.

The cabin crews are taught how to handle difficult situations in the cabin and to seek opinion and assistance from the pilots only if they are unable to resolve the issue. In this instance they obviously needed some help. So I told my copilot to go to the cabin and to deal directly with the passenger. The copilot did as he was told and came out from his seat to go to the cabin. As soon as the lady passenger saw the copilot walking towards her, she quickly buckled her seat belt and we departed without further incident.

The problem would seem trivial to some, however in any situation and experience, we could always learn something from them. The following are the lessons learned from my above experience that I use in my crew resource management (CRM) training for pilots:

• One should not compromise on safety. I have learned that in aviation, safety should take precedence over schedule. This principle should also be applicable in our daily life.
• In life, problems can happen unexpectedly and one should always be prepared for them.
• Have a few alternative solutions to problems that we encounter. In this way if one solution does not work we can always fall back on other alternatives without wasting precious time.
• As a leader, do not be quick to handle the situation yourself. First delegate it to the other team members. If all else fails only then should the leader intervene.
• Practice to think and solve problems on your feet. It is difficult at first, however if you have a template and practice it often, it becomes natural after a while.

Written by Azharuddin Osman

Tags: aircraft, crew resource management, flight safety, leader, Life Lessons from Cockpit, Problem Solving, safety

Have you ever wondered how the aviation industry leverage on technological advancement especially with computerization to help with navigation and assist pilots to operate the aircraft more efficiently?

Cockpit of Fokker 50

Well let us step back a few years early when the commercial flight first started. Back then most of the planes were manned by a 5 crew complement consisting of 2 pilots, a flight engineer, a navigator and a radio operator. With technological advancement the aircraft manufacturers managed to get rid of the radio operator, then the navigator and finally the flight engineer. Almost all of the modern aircrafts are now operated by 2 pilots in the cockpit. Since I am currently flying the B747-400, let me use this aircraft type to explain and illustrate my point and how we can use this lessons from cockpit in our daily life.

Glass cockpit of B747-400

The B747 was the first wide-body commercial airliner that first flew commercially in 1970. The first generation of the B747, the B747-100/200/300 was designed based on a 3 crew concept, the 2 pilots and a flight engineer. In 1989, Boeing came out with the B747-400, an improved version of the B747-300, with longer range, improved engines and with electronic instrument display (glass cockpit) to replace the conventional dials and meters of the older planes. With the improvement and advance technology, the new design dispense with the need of the flight engineer. The B747-400 now only has the two pilots in the cockpit to man the flight. It also changed the aviation scenario, from medium haul flight that averages 8 hours, to the long haul point-to-point flight of around 14 hours.

The Airbus Industrie too capitalised on this technological advancement in computers and electronics to design their new generation of aircrafts. It pioneered the use of digital fly-by-wire flight control systems in a commercial aircraft with the introduction of the A320 in 1988.

How is this possible? In the case of the B747, how can the same plane with the same complex systems be manned by two people instead of three? Well, it is all about leveraging on the advanced technology, computers, and automation that has taken over the function of the flight engineer. The computers and automation has also changed the roles and responsibilities of the two pilots. With this new generation of airplanes, the pilots do not fly the aircraft. This is left to the computers and automation whilst the pilots manage them.

Whenever there is any system malfunction the onboard computers will alert the pilots of this malfunction, and depending on the severity of the malfunction, the automation takes over and provides an alternative source to contain the problem.

This same concept could also be applied in life as well when we leverage on automation to reduce our workload and increase our efficiency. We use automation to simply our work and let them do the work for us. Our role is just to manage them. However we must always remember who the master is and who the slave is. Too much dependence on them could result in us becoming too complacent and we become a slave to them. When that happens, instead of helping us, they become a burden to us. Instead of making our life easier, they increase our workload. Therefore, we must always be the master and not the slave to the computers and automation. Use them to our advantage as to how and when we want to use them.

Written by Azharuddin Osman

Tags: Automation, Cockpit, Computers, Life Lessons from Cockpit, Pilots, Technology