Airliner Flight Deck Crew Coordination - 1948

[PRB]

I just started reading Fate is the Hunter, by Ernest K. Gann. I’ve only been through the first two chapters, but already I am amazed by something totally unexpected. The author is describing his experience in airline flight school, and his first assignment as a co-pilot. He goes into great detail on the relationship between the pilot and the co-pilot in “those days.” What, exactly, “those days” actually are is unknown at this point, because he has yet to inform his dear readers of what year it is of which he writes. I’m guessing it’s late 1940s, since his first assignment was to an airline as co-pilot of a DC-2! Anyway, back to the point. I’ve read that during the 1970s, after several accidents that were due, in part, to poor communications between pilot and co-pilot, the FAA and the airlines began an intensive program designed to improve this situation. It seems that prior to this effort, the relationship between the two men on the flight deck was very much one of superior and subordinate, to the point that the co-pilot would not question the pilot’s actions, even if he knew they were wrong, and would not “speak up”, even if he saw something bad developing, simply because it was not “his place” to question the pilot. This FAA and airline program in the 1970s was designed to get the flight crew acting more like a team than was presently the case.
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In this book, the author paints quite a stunning picture of what this was really like back then. It seems that when this guy reported for duty as co-pilot, the other pilots would not speak to him, he was not expected to speak unless spoken to, he was not allowed to converse with the pilots, he was expected to simply shut up and do as he was told. He could hang out with other co-pilots, but never with the pilots. Now, I’ve read many books on WW-II history, and many of them involved bomber stories, and never did I get the impression that the pilot/co-pilot relationship was as strict and non-flexible as Gann is describing of the post-war airline business. I always got the impression that bomber crews, in particular the flight deck crews, worked as a team, and spoke to each other as equals, at least when it came to matters of flying the ship. And since so many pilots of post war airliners came from military experience, I wonder where this rigid hierarchy on the flight deck came from.
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Anyhow, great read, so far!

[Toastmaker]

Precisely due to the common need for interaction between pilot-copilot on bomber flight decks, I find this implausibile to the extreme that he describes.

[azflyboy]

While military crews generally worked well together, airlines were a bit different since seniority meant everything and captains often regarded first officers as subordinates rather than useful members of a flight crew.

I know several people who flew for airlines in the 80's and 90's before retiring, and even after the FAA mandated CRM training, there were still captains who regarded the role of a first officer as "sit down and shut up", although many of them have likely retired by now.

Incidents like Gann describes are actually extremely plausible, since there have been a number of accidents (Tenerife and Air Florida 990 for example) caused by crew members being afraid to speak up to the captain when they noticed something wrong, and that was 40 some years of "progress" after the indicents Gann talks about.

[Navy Chief]

I find it interesting that the movie, "Fate Is The Hunter" does not have a plot even remotely similar to the book of the same name. I like the movie though.

NC

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058091/

[Willy]

The time period when Gann started flying for the airlines was in the late 30s. He never mentions in Fate is the Hunter which airlines he flew for but they were (in order) American, Matson and TransOcean.

I think you'll find that the relationship between the Captain and the co-pilot depended a lot on how the Captain was with his co-pilot. Some would listen to the co-pilot and others wouldn't. Just depended on which Captain the co-pilot was flying with.