reducing "Crew-caused"
approach and landing
accidents 

Pilot-in-charge Monitored Approach

The most time-  and cost-effective strategy.

There is an element of choice available to resolve some of our safety issues - technology, training, and procedures.

  • Technology improvements such as Enhanced GPWS are costly and applicable mostly to newer aircraft. There are also integration problems with adding warning systems into existing flight decks.
  • Increased crew training may be applicable to all types of operation but costs money, which those operators most likely to benefit from it are least likely to wish to spend. There is also some evidence that “add-on” training such as CRM may “wear off” after a few years and hence need reinforcement.
  • Changing crew procedures can be done at little cost since it simply replaces existing procedures with better ones. The one-off cost of training is in itself small, and the change reinforces the benefits of add-on training such as CRM. Subsequent reinforcement may well be unnecessary since the new procedures by definition incorporate improved CRM techniques, and are routinely used in everyday operation and normal recurrent training.
An operator that adopts PicMA procedures can expect to see fewer incidents involving monitoring breakdowns through many factors:   
  • Procedurally eliminating the "co-pilot's dilemma"
  • making the crew a better engineered "system" 
  • Recognising the many factors in the cross-cockpit authority gradient
  • providing more capacity for commanders' situational awareness   
  • encouraging a conservative mind-set
  • discouraging risk-taking 
  • Minimising mitigation in monitoring communications 
  • Accepting that "monitoring" implies "supervision"
  • Associating monitoring with accountability and authority
  • Promoting monitoring as a fundamental active command role
  • Building on strengths of most national cultures.
  • Reinforcing weaknesses in most national cultures.  

The "pilot culture" and "data and figures" parts of this site contain further justification of this statement.