Today's cabin
crew are highly trained, highly skilled, and centre on safety as the core of
their job function. And, just like the pilots, many have been trained in crew
resource management principles. However, some recent findings have uncovered
some disturbing facts about the division of responsibilities and safety issues
between the cockpit (pilots) and the cabin crew (Cabin crew). The underlying
goal for both the pilots and Cabin crew is the safe and efficient completion of
a flight. Yet, there has been an unrelenting division of these groups in times
of emergencies as well as routine operations. How could this be? As a
layperson, you would assume that these groups would be highly cohesive by
nature, and yet the opposite has been shown to be true.
The
problem with pilot and flight attendant teamwork, particularly in the area of
communications, has its roots in the disparate job functions of both groups.
When speaking of pilots, it is a mostly male dominated profession. Conversely,
when speaking of Cabin crew, it is a mostly female dominated profession. It
should be noted, however, that there has been an increased percentage of
"gender balancing" over the last few decades for both groups.
Theoretically speaking, and this comes from basic innate gender characteristics,
male and female thought processes could be somewhat divergent. This is not to
say that there is an abundance of testosterone in the cockpit or that females
may be influenced by their inherent affective nature, but the gender
differences do have to be considered when groups are segregated into mostly
male versus mostly female categories.
Besides
gender influences, the most salient reason for division in these groups appears
to lie in the division of job functions and responsibilities. The cockpit crew
is separated from the cabin crew by not only physical barriers (the door), but
also communicative barriers (most communication is conducted through an
impersonal interphone). Until relatively recently, pilots considered the
cockpit "their territory" while the Cabin crew considered the cabin
"their territory." Typically, the only times that these two groups
would interface was when the pilots needed to be fed, or in the event of an
emergency.
"the
basic problem is that these two crews represent two distinct and separate
cultures, and that this separation serves to inhibit satisfactory
teamwork."
Well,
we have - the pilots and the Cabin crew have respect amongst one another as
friends but when it comes to working as a crew, we don't work as a crew. We
work as two crews. You have a front-end crew and a back-end crew, and we are
looked upon as serving coffee and lunch and things like that.
By
now you have seen the magnitude of the problem; two groups, two cultures, and
two completely separate job functions. The pilots, who work in the small but
highly complex cockpit—and the Cabin crew, who come from the service-oriented
and spacious cabin—having difficulties bringing their environments closer
together and working in harmony.
Pilots
and Cabin crew need to understand the basic psychology of group dynamics and
the positive effect that pre-flight briefings can have between groups. Many
pilots and Cabin crew may have never worked together before and yet both of
these groups tend to remain isolated before, during, and after a flight. Some captains
are better with an introduction and a briefing than others. But overall, there
tends to be a "chill in the air" during pre-flight routines.
