Crew Resource Management (CRM) Course

So on Monday I went on a pilot Crew Resource Management (CRM) course, at the request of my manager. I was expecting to go into the course and was bored out of my mind. However, it was a remarkably interesting and I was able to take away A LOT of good information which we can apply in the operations department.

I had been on a team resource management course about 5 months ago, as have all of the staff at my company, but it was nowhere near as interesting or useful for the staff.

One of the most interesting parts of the course was about the effect of sleep and how it affects the ability to think, the ability to fly, and how it refreshes you. For example, for in-flight rest, 20-minute segments of sleep are recommended as these are the most mentally refreshing and resting parts of sleep (hence a 20-minute power nap) and problems with flying straight after sleeping in different phases.

We also covered AAIB (UK's Air Accident Investigation Branch) reports on various incidents in the last 5 years, looking at how poor CRM contributed to those incidents.

Overall I found the course really interesting, and found that a lot of the information on the course could also be brought back to the office, as well as used in the air... I would recommend anyone who works in any aspect of aviation try and get themselves on one of these courses, you'd be surprised what you can learn!