Articles for category My Two Cents Worth
The problem with communication is the perception that it’s been achieved.
—George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright
Boy, was ol’ George right. Communication is central to effective crew resource management. An ambiguous message, whether written or spoken, can lead to fatal consequences. With that thought in mind, one would think airline executives, when drafting memos to flight crews, would take great pains to avoid ambiguity at all cost. Apparently, they don’t. Consider the following 1996 memo distributed to pilots at British Airways in an effort to clarify new pilot role titles:
[Read More...]
Categories:
My Two Cents Worth
Maintenance engineers and mechanics have known about ‘The Dirty Dozen’ for years. They are the 12 most common human error preconditions or conditions that act as precursors to accidents or incidents for mechanics.
[Read More...]
Categories:
My Two Cents Worth
In the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner hears ghostly voices coming from his Iowa cornfield telling him, “If you build it they will come,” meaning he should build a baseball diamond and former members from the Chicago Black Sox would come. Each day for the two months that I worked building a crew resource management instructor’s course, a similar line kept replaying in my head: What if I build it and no one comes?
[Read More...]
Categories:
My Two Cents Worth
“The doctor told me I’d never walk again,” former Utah flight nurse Stein Rosqvist told the group with obvious emotion. “I saw that wheelchair being pushed towards me down the corridor and said, ‘That’s definitely not for me.’”
Through months of physical therapy by a nurse that would not permit him to say, “I can’t,” Stein walks today. His is just one of the stories I heard during the three-day digital story workshop I attended recently in Denver, Colorado.
[Read More...]
Categories:
My Two Cents Worth
Last year, HAI President Matt Zuccaro pushed his safety message, “Land the Damn Helicopter,” reminding us that as a last resort when we’ve run out of options, we have the power to break a potential link in an error chain by simply landing.
Research into why helicopters crash isn’t statistically different than other segments of aviation. It is pretty much agreed worldwide that 80 percent of all aviation accidents have an element of human error. Crew resource management (CRM) training can save the day before we need to resort to landing the damn helicopter. CRM, if practiced religiously, will keep your good hands from taking you somewhere your mind hasn’t been.
[Read More...]
Categories:
My Two Cents Worth
By the time I was four years old I knew I was going to be a pilot, and that was that—period. At four
[Read More...]
Categories:
My Two Cents Worth
I was flying as copilot for Ian MacPhail in a Bell 412EP over the Arabian Gulf one bright and sunny
[Read More...]
Categories:
My Two Cents Worth
My alligator mouth has overrun my hummingbird rear end more times than I care to remember. It’s a
[Read More...]
Categories:
My Two Cents Worth
Negative motivation is the act of forcing someone to perform by using threats or punishment. I’m not
[Read More...]
Categories:
My Two Cents Worth
August 14, 2014, will be remembered as a red-letter day in the annals of HEMS safety. That’s the day
[Read More...]
Categories:
My Two Cents Worth