When attending courses at Leopard Aviation, you’ll learn about crew resource management in detail. 

What is crew resource management? Throughout your attendance at our flight school in Arizona, you’ll learn about numerous protocols and tactics to protect and maintain stability during flights. Crew resource management is one of those all-important aspects that can solidify your career as you mature as a pilot. 

CRM ultimately helps you anticipate potential issues, effectively delegate resources, and keep your aircraft safe throughout each flight. Discover its influential role and how you can implement it below. 

What Is Crew Resource Management?

Crew resource management means identifying and using any available tool, personnel, or protocol to maximize safety during a flight. While the crew members already know how to manage resources effectively, they will look to you as the pilot for delegation and leadership, especially during stressful circumstances. Therefore, you must attend aviation teamwork training to memorize and apply crew coordination techniques to ensure your future crew can rely on your directions.

Although many piloting courses will touch on CRM, pilots develop their most effective, potent skills in the cockpit. After all, experience with real-life situations is among the best teachers in any subject. 

When To Use CRM

CRM isn’t a protocol you enact during a specific event. Instead, you continuously use it throughout the flight. It begins as soon as the crew members walk into the crew room and doesn’t end until a crew member clocks out and ends their shift. 

Therefore, you’ll utilize CRM all day, every day. Effective resource management focuses on:

• Communication
• Risk management
• Awareness
• Crew decision-making skills 

As the pilot, you keep everyone on the same page and inform pertinent parties about any changes. 

The Elements of Effective Crew Resource Management

Skillful crew and cockpit resource management typically involves:

• Identifying and predicting potential human error: Although technological tools enhance your ability to practice flight safety, you still rely on the crew, which consists of people. Humans can make mistakes, get distracted, or lose focus under the best circumstances. 
• Using situational awareness: When you understand your situation, you know what’s happening around you at any given moment. You recognize when your situation or environment changes and respond thoughtfully and accordingly. 
• Integrating non-technical skills: Aviation requires lots of technical know-how. However, it also involves interpersonal skills like communication, leadership, and delegation.

What is crew resource management, and how might it look in action? Explore some examples below. 

Understanding Human Error

As mentioned, people make mistakes. Those mistakes can have deadly consequences in the sky. For example, an exhausted lead flight attendant might miss warning signs that a passenger is anxious and on the verge of a breakdown. Since your CRM duties begin before you enter the cockpit, you might pick up on such cues and ask your crew to monitor them. 

Applying Situational Awareness

Situational awareness helps you avoid unpleasant surprises. It involves inventorying concerning details and strategizing methods to get around them. For example, the weather forecast doesn’t call for severe weather. 

Yet, you gauge the dark, foreboding clouds incoming and determine that risks are bigger than expected. You concoct two courses of action. First, you might slightly alter your route to avoid the clouds. Alternatively, you’ll wait for the storm to pass before taking off if the storm moves faster than expected.  

Essential Non-Technical Skills To Cultivate

Non-technical skills include:

• Flight deck communication
• Good judgment and decision making
• Leadership
• Crew management and cooperation

Perhaps the anxious passenger’s mental state has transformed into a full-blown panic attack. You delegate your calm, collected crew members to help escort the passenger off the plane to protect the aircraft, the other people onboard, and the panicking passenger from harm. You execute this operation quickly and efficiently because you understand who should do what. 

These are just a few examples of how CRM can help you and your crew navigate jeopardizing circumstances. You expect the unexpected and keep a plan in place when such events unfold. 

How CRM Benefits Your Crew

Effectively executing CRM offers gives pilots the following advantages:

• Active communication: Communication involves more than just dictating commands. You must actively listen to your crew members to ensure you understand the scope of their concerns. 
• Knowledge sharing: Opening the lines of communication ensures your team feels comfortable sharing their observations. They might pick up on something you miss. Sharing knowledge helps eliminate the potential for human error to interrupt the flight. 
• Enhanced use of technological tools: When you know how to use the technological resources available to you, you can quickly utilize them without a second thought. Memorizing how specific systems and applications work can save much-needed time in a dire situation. 
• Professional assertiveness: Effective CRM makes you look more professional, assertive, and confident. This can carry over into other aspects of your life. 

Develop CRM Skills at Leopard Aviation in Arizona

What is crew resource management? CRM is an essential skill that pilots must develop to keep all crew members aware of the inevitable human factors in aviation. Call 480-605-4539 to request information about attending Leopard Aviation. 

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