Safety and error management: The role of crew resource management

Abstract

I (RLH) had the honour of speaking to the first Australian Aviation Psychology Symposium, where I reviewed the history of Crew Resource Management (CRM) during its first fifteen years using the metaphor of war to describe the battles fought to establish and maintain meaningful programs (Fifteen years of the CRM wars: A report from the trenches, Helmreich, 1993). Four years later, Daniel Maurino continued the metaphor and brought the history up to date (Eighteen years of the CRM wars: A report from headquarters, Maurino, 1996). We also examined the status of CRM at the 1995 meeting (Merritt & Helmreich, 1996). Today we revisit the role of CRM in safety (albeit without the militaristic metaphor). Looking at the status of CRM as the Millennium approaches, we see encouraging signs of health, but also unresolved and even growing problems. Let us start with the downside. CRM has come under the attack in the USA because it has not eliminated accidents and incidents where human factors is a causal element. (Perhaps we should not have abandoned the battle metaphor so rapidly.) The following events have been alleged to represent CRM’s failure. • An aircraft lands at the wrong airport. • An aircraft lands in the wrong country.

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