At 21:42 22 June 2005, Stefan wrote:
M B wrote:

In my experience, I have seen and been a part of confusion
in
the cockpit. One pilot is saying one thing and the
other is
contradicting it. I've also had both pilots on the
controls at the same time, with opposite pressures
applied.

I'm more and more, well, surprized, what you have been
experiencing
while flying. I've never seen, even less been part
of such a thing.

Quite common in US accident reports, especially among
very experienced pilots. Airline black box transcripts
almost always
show there was some CRM problem that contributed to
a difficulty. I've seen CRM miscommunications result
in less-than-perfect results several times with others,
too.
Most commonly I've seen it when instructors initiate
emergency procedures as a 'surprise.' Gear-up landing,
and a
landout when too far from the end of the runway on
a
'rope break' procedure where the student was too slow
reacting.

As pilots become more skilled, the reasons for accidents
seem to shift from pure stick skill issues to
other things, particularly CRM. I would guess that
if there
was a black box in every two-seat glider accident,
some CRM problem would be listed as contributing.

Communicate before the flight, define the roles and
adhere to it. Who
will do what? Who will fly in an emergency? Communicate
during the
flight, and do so clearly.

Excellent, excellent advice. Something I think that
is not
done formally very often in some places...


And, you may ask, if the other pilot is doing something
I don't like?
Well, if I don't trust the other pilot, I won't fly
with him. If he
doesn't trust me, I don't want him to fly with me.
Simple as that, very
basic CRM stuff. (It needn't be offensive when I say
I don't like his
way of flying, because I'm not implying that he's a
bad pilot, I'm just
saying our styles are incompatible.)

The trouble is: you have to fly with him once to find
out.
Hopefully it is a benign flight...


I'm surprized that, as it seems, you can become an
instructor in the USA
without knowing such basic stuff.

You're not supposed to be able to. CRM is an emphasis

area for all practical tests for all pilot ratings
in the USA.

However, there are something like 14 'emphasis areas'
so
it ends up getting buried, and trivially tested.

And despite the test standards being very specific
in the
'you have the controls' phrase for exchanging controls,

I've had examiners say 'I've got the airplane' and
have
students say other arcane phrases, and sometimes just
release all of the controls completely in a challenging
situation,
with no words at all!

So now I rehearse the 'you have the controls' stuff

for the first flight with everyone, even other instructors!
It seems funny (they should know that, right?) but
I haven't had problems since.

It seems like a lot of non-instructors fly together
in two-seaters,
and don't formalize the CRM stuff. And hey, what are
you gonna
do if one is more experienced than the other? If the
newbie is flying and gets into an emergency, have the
more experienced guy take over? Kind of hard to do
in a split second.

Another post suggested that one of these Nimbus accidents
may have been from one guy doing one thing and the
other guy doing something else unexpected. I wouldn't
be surprised.

My point here is that I think CRM is maybe a bigger
factor in a
lot of 2-seat accidents than the reports show. The
stuff you
talk about as being obvious isn't taught and tested
as
textbook here in the USA, or perhaps just turns into
one among many 'emphasis areas.'

It sounds like in your training this recieved more
emphasis.
Was that formally required for license, or was that
just
informal common-sense? In the USA, in our
Glider Flying Handbook, there isn't anything at all
that I am aware of which talks about tandem seating
and sticks and
dangers of simultaneous pressures on dual controls/CRM
brief before takeoff.

This is a bit of a training gap, in my opinion...



Stefan

Mark J. Boyd