Crew resource management; United Airlines 232
Effectiveness of Crew Resource management with United Flight 232
The United Airlines Flight 232 crash is famous within the aviation community as a textbook example of successful crew resource management, due to the effective use of all the resources available aboard the plane for help during the emergency (Management Communication Quarterly, 2005).
United Airlines Flight 232 had a disk come apart in one of the engines; the fragments of the disintegrating engine severed all hydraulic lines and disabled all three of the hyrdraulic control systems (Weiner, 1989). For the next forty minutes,
Captain Alfred C. Haynes, a thirty-three-year veteran pilot, and his flight crew rewrote the book on flying a DC-10, improvising ways to control it, and coming heartbreakingly close to making a nearly impossible landing at the Sioux City, Iowa airport (Parker, 1989). According to analysts and other expert pilots, the ability of the pilot to keep his aircraft under control, at all, let alone try to land it, was almost beyond belief; nor could any flight computer system, however complicated, have taken over from him (Malnic et al, 1989). Although 111 died when the plane turned over at the last moment, 185 survived.
In conclusion, crew resource management and the ability to successfully respond to any emergency depend on the cooperation and partnership among the various agencies. As seen in United Airlines Flight 232, the emergency response teams were very effective and successful in saving lives due to the training and simulations drills by both flight and emergency response crews. It is imperative for