Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research Volume 10 Number 1 JAAER Fall 2000 Article 8 Fall 2000 Towards the Zero Accident Goal: Assisting the First Officer: Monitor and Challenge Captain Errors Eugen Tarnow Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.erau.edu/jaaer Scholarly Commons Citation Tarnow, E. (2000). Towards the Zero Accident Goal: Assisting the First Officer: Monitor and Challenge Captain Errors. Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.15394/ jaaer.2000.1269 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Tarnow: Towards the Zero Accident Goal: Assisting the First Officer: Moni Towarak the Zero Accident Goal TOWARDS THE ZERO ACCIDENT WAL:ASSISTING THE FIRST OFFICER MONITOR AND CRALLENGE CAPTAIN ERRORS Eugen Tarnow In this article the authority system in the airplane cockpit is related to thirty year old authority studies of Stanley Milgram. Human errors made in the cockpit are found similar to those made in the authority experiments. It is argued that up to 20% of all airplane accidents may be preventable by optimizing the monitoring and challenging of captain errors by the first officer. INTRODUCTION captain, a first officer and sometimes a flight engineer. In In a hierarchical organization, the boss's authority in this chapter we will limit ourselves to considering the the work function can be more or less absolute. In 1963, the relationship between the captain and the first officer. We eminent social psychologist Stanley Milgram measured the begin by describing the many sources of the captain's strength of the United States society authority. He found authority. They include rules, difkrent levels of flight that it was about much stronger than expected - a experience, aviation tradition, military, corporate, and psychology experimenter was able to make subjects tiny societal norms and values. out orders that led to the simulated injury and death of a The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) states that a confederate. Such strong authority tends to create situations captain, nobody else, is the final authority on the airplane. in which errors made by authorities will not be corrected. The CFR sets differential requirements for captains and In particular, this is the case in the airplane cockpit: a fkst officers. For a captain it requires about 1500 hmsof disproportionate number ofaccidents occur with the captain flight time and for a first officer the requirement is only flying erroneously and the first officer failing to monitor 200 hours of flight time. Once a first officer llfills the and challenge the captain errors. CFR requirement to become a captain, he or she must also We make the case that any lack of monitoring and 11fi11 the captain requirements of the particular airline. challenging of the captain by the first officer is due to the Personnel policies provide additional thresholds for both already well documented difficulty of monitoring and overall flight hours and flight hours in the particular challenging authority in our society. The Milgram aircraft and the pilot also needs to have seniority on the experiments are described briefly, specific connections airline's union list. It typically takes a decade or two to between the experiment and the authority structure in the become a captain on a large airplane. In the NTSB's airplane cockpits are made and using this fiame work an accident sample (see below), captains had 3-4 times more accident is analyzed more closely using a cockpit voice experience than their first officers whether measwed by the recording. We make a numerical estimate of how often historical total flying time (median times of 14,000 vs. inadequate monitoring and challenging errors results in 5,100 hours) or the experience in the accident aircraft type , accidents. Finally, we suggest ways to achieve the proper (median times of 3300 vs. 880 hours). amount of monitoring and challenging by use of a simple Aviation organizational norms include the individualistic "monitoring and challenging optimization" technique thinking ftom the historical period of the single-pilot during LOFT. planes. This tradition devalues the first officer. Thus, the THE SOURCES OF THE CAPTAIN'S institution of the first officer is "not hlly developed," and AUTHORITY IN THE UNITED STATES the latter plays a "distinctly secondary role". Indeed, "in COMMERCIAL AIRPLANE COCKPIT 1952 the guidelines for proficiency checks at one major In a typical commercial airplane codcpit there is a airline categorically stated that the first officer should not JAAER, Fall 2000 Page 29 Published by Scholarly Commons, 2000 1 Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research, Vol. 10, No. 1 [2000], Art. 8 Towarak the Zero Accident Goal correct errors made by the captain" (Helmreich & Foushee, shocks increase to dangerous levels, he suddenly becomes 1993, pp. 4-5). quiet. There are four of Milgram's findings that can help Military values enter commercial airlines when pilots shed light on inadequate monitoring and challenging in the who are military veterans enter the civilian workforce. airplane cockpit: These values include "respect for rank, for leaders who take 1. Excessive Obedience: Milgram found that most charge and act decisively, and for subordinates who people can be made to inflict intense pain and even kill the understand that it is usually not appropriate to question the learner. decisions of their superiors" (Birnbach & Longridge, 1993, 2. Hesitant Challengjng: The teacher's objections p. 265). to giving the learner electrical shocks were o%en hesitant Additionally, the values of a hierarchical corporate and easily overruled by the experimenter's replies, such as culture contribute to strong authohty relationships. For telling the teacher that "the experiment requires that you example, in a New York Times article, the strength of the continue." * authority of the CEO of a particular airline was indicated 3. Lack of Monitoring: The teacher accepts the by the CEO's staying power in conjunction with seemingly authority's definition of the situation, which does not extreme incompetence. He would "doze of' in meetings include the choice of disobedience but only the necessity of I and call the company officers, and even the airline, by the continued obedience. Indeed, in the Milgram experiment wrong name (Bryant, 1994, p. 17N). not one out of almost a thousand teacher-subjects came up The Captain's authority can be even stronger in other with an interpretation leading them to call the police or fiee societies. Merritt and Helmreich (1996) found that the the learner (Zimbardo, 1974). statement, 'Senior staff deserves extra benefits and 4. Physical Closeness Matters: The strength of the privileges," elicited a neutral position to slight authority of the experimenter was found to be higher the disagreement among American captains and first officers closer the teacher was to the experimenter. ~ fiom four airlines, but those of a Brazilian airline agreed In addition, there is the Milgram Prediction Error: It was with it. The statement, "Crewmembers should not question shown that predictions (done by psychiatrists, graduate the decisions or actions of the captain except when they students and faculty in the behavioral sciences, college threaten the safety ofthe flight," elicited variations between sophomores, and middleclass adults) underestimate the 15 and 93% agreement among pilots in different countries, rate of obedience to authority by a fador of a hundred and the statement, "If I perceive a problem with the flight, (Milgram, 1974)! This Milgram Prediction Error, which I will speak up, regardless of who might be affected," remains the same, keeps organizations fiom addressingthe elicited variations between 36 and 98 % agreement. Finally, issue of how to protect against erroneous authority. the statement, "The organization's rules should not be THE DIFFICULTY OF CHALLENGING AN broken - even when the employee thinks it is in the ERRONEOUS CAPTAIN company's best interests," elicited variations between 22 There are similaritiesbetween the Milgram experimental and 76 %. That these statements wry over to actual situation and the behavior in the cockpit during distress. differences in behavior seems reasonable. We make a simple correspondence between the Milgram SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY FINDINGS: THE experiment and the cockpit dynamics: the role of the DIFFICULTY OF CHALLENGING STRONG experimenter is taken by the erroneous captain, the teacher AUTHORITY is the first officer, and the harm to the learner and , Excessively obedient behavior in the presence of authority everybody else is the airplane crashing. was found in the psychology laboratory by Stanley Milgram Observers of behavior in the aviation field have noted the over thirty-five years ago (Milgram, 1974). In these tendency of the captain-first officer relationship to be too experiments, a subject, the teacher, is asked by the authoritarian in many instances. Ginnett (1993) writes experimenter to give electrical shocks to a confederate, the about the tendency of the first officer not to question the learner. The stated purpose of the experiment is to captain (here, and later in other examples, I have inserted - understand how punishment affects memory recall. The the applicable findings of Milgram, mentioned above, in learner first fakes discomfort and as the fske electrical square brackets): The authority dynamic surrounding the Page 30 JAAER, Fall 2000 https://commons.erau.edu/jaaer/vol10/iss1/8 DOI: https://doi.org/10.15394/jaaer.2000.1269 2 Tarnow: Towards the Zero Accident Goal: Assisting the First Officer: Moni Towards the Zero Accident Goal role of the captain must be extremely Two researchers write similarly about the difficulty of the powerful. [and] has resulted in firs! officer to get the attentim of the captain that an error crewmembers not speaking up when was being made, rekrring to "a co-pilot, concerned that necessary [Hesitant Challengind.