POOR COMMUNICATION
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AIR CREWS DON'T COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY?
TENERIFE AIRPORT DISASTER: 1977
This accident remains the most deadly accident ever to have occurred in aviation history. At Los Rodeos Airport (now named Tenerife North Airport), a KLM Boeing 747 and a Pan Am Boeing 747 collided on the runway killing 583 people and leaving the remaining 61 occupants with serious injuries.
The final report concluded that bad weather, stress, and ambiguous communications were the leading factors. Although it cannot be discussed in an unbiased report, it is my view, and the view of many, that the captain of the KLM jet prioritised his own image over safety. He was a high-ranking training captain, and he perhaps saw it that a significant delay could have damaged his reputation. That being said, it would be wholly unfair to lay all the blame upon one individual.
I see it that poor communication was very evident in this accident. I have provided a link to the cockpit voice recordings of both aircraft on the day of the accident. It strikes me that confusion enveloped all members of crew yet none of them endeavoured to seek a reasonable level of clarity. In circumstances such as this where dense fog means visibility is at a minimum, communication is the only tool available and should be treated as just that.
A breakdown in CRM is also evident - the most important thing in a difficult situation is that all members of the crew understand precisely what is happening and understand exactly what actions need to be performed at any given moment. My view, based upon the voice recordings, is that this did not happen.
As a result of this catastrophe, a number of recommendations were provided by the Airline Pilots Association and Engineering and Air Safety Washington, DC. They recommended a minimum visibility for taxiing aircraft of 150m, and that "take off" should not be used in any transmission by ATC other than to give an aircraft permission to do so.
AIR FRANCE FLIGHT 447: 2009
Air France Flight 447 was a transatlantic flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. At cruise altitude, the autopilot disconnected and the instruments began displaying erroneous readings. What followed was a collapse in communication between all members of the cockpit crew as well as a lack of CRM.
The lack of communication resulted in the Airbus A330 stalling and consequently plummeting into the Atlantic. There were no survivors, and the relatives of the 228 occupants who lost their lives had to wait nearly two years for an answer. The impact of the jet into the sea was so severe that it was separated into thousands of pieces across the ocean floor, meaning finding the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder was an extremely difficult task.
Nonetheless, it was later discovered that one of the aircraft's pitot tubes had frozen over due to atmospheric conditions. This should not have happened. However, it also became apparent that the crew the cockpit did not communicate effectively with each other. It also did not help that the captain had been away for a period of rest and was unaware of the situation in the cockpit upon returning. However, the lack of cohesion among the crew ultimately sealed the fate of the aircraft.