Today's flight and cabin crews are much different than they were during the early years of
commercial aviation. The captain of the aircraft was once considered "God" and his decisions were
always the "right" ones. There was little, if any, input from the other pilots because they assumed the
captain knew what he was doing. It was also considered somewhat disrespectful to question the
decisions of a superior. Part of this thinking had its genesis from the military. At one time the military
was the biggest producer of pilots, and along with military training came a good dose of machismo,
ego, and autocratic decision-making processes (many military fighters were single pilot aircraft and
therefore lacked the redundancy of, and decision inputs from, another crewmember). This attitude did
not transfer well into civilian cockpits. The problems began to manifest in pilot error related airline
accidents that claimed hundreds of lives:
1978, United 171 ran out of fuel over Portland, Oregon and no one noticed until it was too late.
1972, Eastern 401 gradually descended into the Everglades as all three crewmembers became
fixated on a landing light indication and the autopilot became disengaged.
1982, Air Florida 90 was not properly de-iced and crashed shortly after takeoff from
Washington, D.C. In addition, standard operating procedures were violated by an inexperienced
flight crew.
1985, Delta 191 was caught in an unreported windshear on final approach to the Dallas/Fort
Worth airport.
Crew Resource Management (CRM). was born