Crew Resource Management and Automation
This domain tests crew resource management and automation: communication, leadership, situation awareness, workload management, and the safe use and monitoring of automated systems.
CRM
- Core skills: clear communication, briefings, assertiveness with respect, workload sharing, and monitoring.
- Situation awareness has three levels: perceiving cues, understanding them, and projecting the future state.
- Graded assertiveness helps when a concern is not acknowledged; speak up early and specifically.
Automation
- Automation can reduce workload but introduces complacency, bias, mode confusion and skill degradation.
- Automation bias is over-trusting the system; complacency is reduced monitoring.
- Always ask: what is it doing, why is it doing that, and what will it do next?
- Mode awareness requires reading the flight mode annunciator and cross-checking against the intended path.
Worked example
The autopilot captures a different mode from the one expected. The pilot notices a discrepancy but assumes the system is correct. That is automation bias. Correct action is to disconnect or re-select the intended mode, verify the flight path, and state the mode aloud so both crew share awareness.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating CRM as being polite rather than managing resources and threat.
- Assuming automation is always safer.
- Failing to monitor because the autopilot is engaged.
- Not verbalising mode changes; silent assumptions cause mode confusion.