THE MANAGEMENT OF PERSONALITY CLASHES

A. In this first incident, a combination of a Junior Captain, a very Senior First Officer who had failed a Command Conversion course and thus precluded from Captaincy, and a Junior Flight Engineer Officer who was still in his first year as an E/O, made a routine flight a nightmare. There is a code of procedure in some companies, whereby newly created Captains cannot give sectors to their Co-pilots until six months have elapsed since their rank of Captain was confirmed.

The aircraft was a Boeing 707-436 and in addition to the Flight Deck Crew, there was a cabin crew of six.

The crew were advised that the flight was a charter for the ferrying of Chinese restaurant staff, between London to Hong Kong, via Dubai. This charter was so frequent that one of the company aircraft was dedicated to the route and had even been repainted in the charter company colours. The Cabin crew, of ethnic origin, would be supplied by the charter company.

The First Officer had arrived at the briefing point well ahead of the required time and had gathered all the necessary paperwork for flight planning. From the very first exchange between the two pilots, the flight engineer realised that personalities would play a major part in the success or failure of the flight. Without any explanation, the captain brazenly told his Co-Pilot, “I’m doing both these sectors” without any explanation as to why. The style of the captain’s voice was such that the Co-Pilot was clearly taken aback and, being many years older than the Junior Captain, responded with a stream of invective, the cleanest part of which was “Suit yourself”.

Having decided the fuel requirement, the crew were taken to the aircraft and the flight engineer commenced his external inspection. All was well with the technical state of the aircraft and so he made his way on to the flight deck to commence his internal pre-flight checks. He became aware of the icy atmosphere between the two pilots, but being very junior himself, did not feel he could contribute much, other than to be totally professional, while ensuring that if a checklist response was required, that whoever should respond, having done or checked something, that this had been carried out before saying so.

The engines were started and the ‘Taxi Checks’ commenced, with selections of flap and the setting for the Trim. The Engine Anti-Ice system would be necessary and the Flight Engineer liaised with the captain to ensure that all the engines had this system functioning correctly. All checks being completed, the aircraft lined up to take off.

On the Boeing 707, the airspeed indicators are duplicated and there is a standard call out required that, during the early part of the take-off run, that these gauges are actually reading and that any differences between them acceptable. This call is usually made at around 60kts, as this is the lowest speed that an accurate value can be given.

The speed built up and the flight engineer noticed that both the airspeed indicators were indeed showing a rising airspeed. The Co-Pilot remained silent and after 70kts had been passed, the Flight Engineer could not resist commenting

“I see that the Airspeed Indicators are reading, both sides and no discrepancy”

“That’s my call” shouted the Co-Pilot.

The Captain took his hands off the engine thrust levers and punched the co-pilot on the upper left arm, while shouting back “Well f*****g make it then!”

By then the speed had increased to a critical speed and the routine call by the co-pilot should be “V1”, which is the speed beyond which any emergency on the runway must be taken into the air, as insufficient runway remains to stop in.

“V1” shouted the Co-Pilot, but 5 knots late. He called “Rotate” at the correct speed and the Captain gently and professionally raised the nose and the flight was on its way. The next call to be made by the co-pilot should be “Positive Rate of Climb” to which the captain should say “Gear Up” and these two calls take place around 100ft above the runway.

Passing 100ft and no call was made by the co-pilot, so the flight engineer, thinking that something seriously wrong was going on, called “I see we have a Positive Rate of climb Captain”. To which the captain ordered “Gear Up”.

“Put your own f*****g gear up” came the response, but the captain felt some turbulent air penetration, possibly from the departure wake of the previous aircraft and so he had to keep both hands firmly on the flying controls. So, recognising the enormous performance drag of trying to climb with the landing gear still extended, the Flight engineer offered to do this for the Captain to be told to “Shut up. Do your f*****g job John, or I am dumping fuel and going back”. Reluctantly, it seemed, the co-pilot selected the Landing Gear to ‘Up’.

The rest of the flight was carried out in almost total silence unless one or other of the pilots was off the flight deck, in which situation, the remaining pilot would harangue the poor flight engineer about the inadequacies of the other.

How do you cope with a Commander from Hell? The hectoring style of speech and the insensitive handling of a ‘difficult’

co-pilot could so easily have caused an accident. Could the flight engineer have done anything else? Over the years, the flight engineer flew with this Captain three times and on each occasion, something would ‘go wrong’ that needed a Command presence, to which this captain almost certainly introduced more drama than his more normal colleagues would have done. Twenty years have now passed, during which time the flight engineer and the Captain have met briefly only once. However the dominant dimension of the Captain’s personality has not changed.

B. Another example of problems caused by such a ‘hectoring’ style caused a young co-pilot to totally lose Situation Awareness on descent into Rio where he followed the wrong Heading, that had been wound on to the Heading cursor by

the Captain, who had made a simple human factors error of transposing two digits in his mind, when accepting an ATC instruction. The flight engineer had written down the ATC heading and intervened to correct the Captain, showing the Captain his clipboard, only to be ignored and then reluctantly querying with ATC. By this time the aircraft was heading straight for high ground and ATC were getting very alarmed, cancelling further descent and issuing a rapid series of heading changes and speed controls to avoid a CFIT accident. The young co-pilot got very anxious and lapsed into a sort of robot mode and it took a lot of effort by the flight engineer to keep him engaged.

QUESTIONS

1. What would you have done in the first situation – if different WHY?

2. Should the Captain have given the co-pilot a handling sector and offered him the choice?

3. What of the First Officer’s behaviour? Should the captain have remarked on it and done something about it when the first ‘explosive’ tirade occurred during briefing?

4 If Yes, Why? If No why not?

5. How should the flight engineer have reacted to such a poor verbal interplay between captain & co-pilot from the beginning, to avoid it developing into a quite dangerous situation?

6. What would you do in future, when you are on a multi pilot crew if a problem such as this occurs?

7. How would you cope with someone much older and perhaps even more experienced?

8. Having newly joined the company as a more mature First Officer from the Air Force, this could happen to you.

When and how would you handle the situation?

9. Who would you turn to for advice on what to do regarding such pilots?

10. When would you take “matters” further, that is to the Management?

11. Was this event reportable to the Regulatory Authority? If yes, by what means?

12. In what order would you approach the above?

13. Why would you be taking “matters” further?

WHAT CAN ONE LEARN FROM THIS?

1. In the first part of the ‘Sitrep’, the relatively junior captain appeared to be particularly abrasive in his attitude towards the older co-pilot

2. This captain seems to have maintained this abrasive attitude throughout his career.

3. The co-pilot was particularly obnoxious and had a distinct personality problem that was bordering on the dangerous.

4. In the second example of this Sitrep, the captain’s error in transposing numbers in an ATC instruction was a human failing. That he refused to acknowledge the Flight Engineer’s attempt at correcting the mistake he made was appalling airmanship. So was his behaviour and treatment of his young inexperienced co-pilot.

5. The Flight Engineer did his best to keep the co-pilot focused on his flying of the aircraft and to stay away from terrain and a CFIT situation.

COMMENTS

1. No one seems to have picked up this captain’s Attitude Problem towards his colleagues. Was this a failing of the training department that ‘rubber-stamped’ recurrent check flights and route checks from the start of his career in the left hand seat?

2. The abrasively abrupt manner he used to deal with his older co-pilot pre-flight when he told him that he (the captain) would fly both sectors, then did not deal with the situation he had created when the co-pilot responded in such violent language, should have been a warning that a big problem was developing. That he did nothing to defuse the situation at that point only allowed the situation to further deteriorate as the flight progressed. The captain should have explained that because he was a recently promoted captain, the rules did not allow him to give sectors to co-pilots; and that he was also not to be rostered with others who had been on the fleet for less that a given period. These are UK Regulatory Authority requirements that are explained in the Guidance to AOC holders’ documents, which operators are expected to adopt and abide by; and upon which Operations Manuals are compiled.

3. The captain’s body language during take-off and his way of responding to the co-pilot’s unacceptable responses were not helping to return the atmosphere to normal.

4. The co-pilot was totally unprofessional and downright dangerous by acting as he did after take-off and thereafter.

5. The captain clearly had a communications problem when dealing with his crew.

6. The first officer’s attitude left a lot to be desired. He too had an attitude problem that seems to have been overlooked by fleet management, allowing him to continue to operate whilst in such a disturbed frame of mind brought about by frustration and jealousy. It is probable that he saw failing his command course as everybody else’ fault except his own; a fact he was unable to accept, resulting in the sort of unreasonable behaviour demonstrated.

7. To go on a Command course in BOAC in the early 1970s, was a ‘once in a lifetime’ thing and if you failed to make the grade, you would be annotated as a Cat ‘C’ co-pilot. You kept your seniority but this caused other problems, when seniority determined the quality of the work you did, with the most senior crew members getting the most desirable trips, often with lucrative long sector premium payments.

SITREP 6 – On the ground & in flight WINTER OPERATIONS

In this example, a Captain is faced with a series of difficult decisions during a Winter Operations situation. During this, he needed to juggle both the nature of the Icing conditions, the availability of a Departure ‘slot’, Crew Duty hours and the inescapable limitations of Crew Fatigue with dis-rhythmic side effects. This crew had been rostered for a duty called a Back-to-Back, in which two Trans Atlantic trips were strung together, with only minimum rest between the two. These were always followed by 5 days free from duty, so were popular ways of doing a lot of flying in a short period of time to acquire the number of credited hours to make the monthly quota. It was not uncommon for the flight engineer to be on a back-to-back, while the other crew members were not and this was the case on this flight. Thus the flight engineer was on his 4^th Atlantic crossing in 5 days.

Washington DC, Dulles airport (IAD), is a very busy place at all times of the year. The combination of it being a major Operator Hub, major city transport feed and a Trans-Atlantic gateway, means that a wide variety of aircraft need to use it.

The airport has adequate equipment and trained personnel to deal with winter conditions but during periods of high demand, there will sometimes be a wait, for the fluids required for the De-Icing rigs to heat up.

During the short bus ride to the airport, the flight crew were well aware of the prevailing conditions and that pre-flight de-icing would be needed. The weather was not particularly cold, but the snow showers were frequent and of short but dense duration. Timing would be of the essence, as the usual mix of de-icing/anti-icing fluid ‘hold-over time’ would be of the shortest time allowed – less than 10 minutes. At the aircraft, the de-icing rigs were literally standing by to start spraying the wings, thickly covered with fresh wet snow. The flight engineer did his usual external inspection and noted that no liquid was falling from the upper wing surfaces, meaning that the wing would be cold-soaked and that there would probably be ice beneath the snow. Rejoining his colleagues on the flight deck, he advised the Captain and Co-Pilot of what he had observed.

The passengers were loaded and the various external doors were closed, such that it was safe to call ATC and request Start Clearance. Being told to ‘Standby’ was not unexpected and this was later extended to ‘Expect further clearance in two-zero minutes’, again routine. Sitting on the warm flight deck, with a cup of tea and a substantial local style sandwich, the crew began to observe the adjacent aircraft’s wing, and the progress of their departure following de-icing treatment.

This was expeditiously carried out and they began a slow push-back, during which time, our de-icing had commenced, using the hot 75/25 fluid / water mix prescribed. This process required that air conditioning must be switched off, to avoid fumes contaminating the air systems. The flight engineer went out to check that the process had completely cleared the horizontal surfaces and he was provided with a cherry-picker type vehicle to enable access to these.

By this time, the wind had increased and the snow had changed from wet fluffy flakes to tiny grains, as the temperature fell. Then, a window of clear weather appeared and the adjacent aircraft, now free from ice, completed the push back and commence taxiing. This was a disaster for the subject aircraft, as the wind direction and power required to move this departing aircraft, blew snow and slush, mixed with de-icing fluid run-off all over the freshly treated side of the still parked B747 left wing and tail. This was an unfortunate event as the de-icing rigs had departed to deal with another aircraft and had to be re-called. This took about 10 minutes, so the Captain made the correct decision to have the whole aircraft de-iced again as a precaution. The flight engineer prepared to go outside once again and ensure that all was well prior to departure; meanwhile the Co-pilot began to negotiate another departure slot.

During the second visual check on the cherry picker, the flight engineer observed that the safety gate on the cage at the top of the jib had a broken latch, such that if he leaned over the gate, it would open automatically. This meant that he could only look at the wings, rather than lean over and attempt to scrape off anything left on the wings. Clear Ice is notoriously difficult to detect on grey metal, but by the use of his powerful torch and professional knowledge of the aircraft profile, he satisfied himself that the wings were clean. He returned to the flight deck and divested himself of his cold weather clothing, a somewhat lengthy process. During this time, the Captain, alone with him on the flight deck, had a short conversation.

“The weather at LHR isn’t looking too special and Crew Scheduling are asking if we will go to Prestwick, for a ‘Re-Fuel and Go’ transit. Will you do that? The flight engineer thought about this for a few seconds and then made his decision.

“I’m very sorry Captain, but I can’t guarantee my state of fitness to fly two sectors tonight. If we go to PWK, we will not be the only ones doing that and I can see me having to do all the outside stuff, with possibly de-icing once again and in 6 1/2 hours time, I cannot reliably tell you how I will feel, now. Remember that this is the 2^nd half of a back-to-back for me, Captain. It is best that you know this now, so that another engineer could be positioned up there if necessary”.

The Captain accepted the response and went out into the upper deck, where the co-pilot was talking to the stewardess in the small galley area at the rear. Seconds later he returned with the co-pilot and we made ourselves ready to commence our Start Checks. The Captain formally paused and said “Gentlemen. I have asked you individually to extend our duty tonight and you have both declined for your own reasons. If we have to land at Prestwick (PWK), we will get off and another crew will take over, or we will take minimum rest and carry on after that. I must say that I am disappointed, but I accept your candour and that this is the end of the matter”.

It really was the ‘end of the matter’ and the crew behaved professionally and cordially towards each other throughout the night. Short naps were snatched as required and the flight did in fact land at LHR directly. Following the flight, the Captain, a Senior Training Captain, went straight around to the Fleet management office and told the whole story to the Chief Pilot, with the final comment “Look XXXX, its winter on the North Atlantic and the workload is a pig. This sort of