Aviation crew resource management – a critical appraisal, in the tradition of reflective practice, informed by flight and cabin crew feedback

Credited with numerous successes, such as the saving of 185 lives at Sioux City, crew resource management (CRM) serves a fast-paced and fast-changing industry. In the tradition of reflective practice, this paper presents a timely practitioner-informed critique with the intention of both improving the pedagogy of CRM training and identifying applications beyond aviation: other high-risk industries are experiencing the sorts of catastrophic failures seen by commercial aviation in the 1960s and 1970s. The questionnaire survey produced expected and unexpected results. Unexpected results included the claim that practicing CRM brings psycho-social benefits. Suggested improvements to the pedagogy of CRM training included the widening of the CRM training audience to include operational personnel other than flight and cabin crew, and introduction of experiential/action learning (learning-by-doing) exercises, such as spending time in a full-function, three-axis flight-simulator. Research in the field of educational technology and curricula has shown experiential/action learning to be the most effective mode of teaching. The quality of survey participants’ suggestions confirms the usefulness of craft knowledge and practitioner feedback specifically, and of reflective practice generally.