CRM Case Study (AVIA300)

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Liberty University *

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300

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Industrial Engineering

Date

Oct 30, 2023

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docx

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Uploaded by ChancellorMandrill2650

1 CRM Case Study on United Airlines Flight 173 In all aspects of human interaction, communication has long been considered crucial. From a safety perspective, communication plays an important role in air travel, as it does in any human activity. This case study will dissect the root causes that led to the tragedy of United Airlines Flight 173. Most importantly, it will identify the possible solutions and/or recommendations, within the scope of Crew Resource Management (CRM), that should have been implemented to help mitigate this disaster in 1978. In hindsight, the events that led to the crash of United Airlines Flight 173 were both regrettable and unnecessary. Prior to CRM, the safety of an aircraft and its crew were inherently at the discretion of the captain. The effects of this culture were believed to be one of the main factors that lead the Douglas DC-8 to crash into a wooded section of a populated area of suburban Portland (National Transportation Safety Board, 1979). While the aircraft entered a holding pattern approximately 19NM from the Portland airport, the crew was fixated on trying to diagnose a landing gear light malfunction. As fuel consumption was being addressed by the flight engineer and copilot, the captain was focusing on the latter problem, the landing gear light. As the captain fixated on the landing gear, in total disregard of the crew’s announcement of low fuel, the DC-8 lost both engines due to fuel exhaustion. This led to the aircraft leaving the holding pattern to ultimately crash 6NM from the airport. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that the first officer and flight engineer did attempt to address the fuel consumption issue, however, were unable to get the captain to focus in on it. This type of miscommunication and lack of aircrew coordination led to the death of 10 passengers. The events that unfolded during the crash of United Airlines Flight 173 led the airline industry to develop and implement what is now known as Crew Resource Management.

2 One of the two elements of CRM was “Authority with participation”. If the captain of Flight 173 were to have allowed his fellow crewmembers to be more involved in the decision- making process, it could have led the flight engineer and first officer to be more vocal and assertive when trying to get the captain to focus on the fuel situation. Participation, in the context of CRM, would have presented the captain with the opportunity to foster crew participation without diminishing his perceived authority (Cusick, S. K., et al., 2017). In conclusion, if this CRM element was implemented, it could have potentially led to the safety of United Airlines Flight 173.

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