The United Airlines Flight 232 Accident

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The Crew’s Strategy
Interpersonal Communication
Saving More Human Lives
The Communication Process
The Effect on the Training Systems
Conclusion
Reference

Introduction

Human errors can cost lives when it comes to air safety. It is often the case that the crew make errors in their decisions and actions (Okray, Lubnau, & Lubnau, 2004) this is why good crew resource management (CRM) is crucial one board the plane. One of the brightest examples of the good CRM is the United Airlines Flight 232 Accident that took place on 19 July 1989. Back then “a United Airlines DC-10 experienced a catastrophic engine failure at cruise altitude” (Krause, 2003, p. 445). The plane took off from Denver to Chicago; Philadelphia was its final point of destination. An hour after the flight began, the no. 2 engine suffered an irretrievable failure; the hydraulic pressure was zero, and the plane stopped responding to any flight control inputs. The pilots were forced to perform an emergency landing and miraculously succeeded. The crew has landed the plane, but the lives of 110 out of 285 passengers have been lost (Aircraft Accident Report, 1989). Such factors as crew’s strategy, their interpersonal communication, and cooperation, as well as the involvement of the crew members and flight attendants in the communication process, prove the efficiency of the CRM in this particular case; the long-term effect of this accident on the current training systems will also be considered.

The Crew’s Strategy

The strategy that the crew had adopted during the flight was, perhaps, the only one appropriate at that time. With no functioning hydraulic systems, the pilots chose to adjust the throttles of the only two remaining engines. This allowed controlling the altitude through running one of the engines faster to turn the plane. After this, “the captain began emergency landing procedures and discovered that the nearest airport was the Sioux City Gateway Airport” (Conroy, 2005). The most important for the pilots was to stay away from the city because the uncontrollable plane could destroy it and take away the lives of its citizens.

Interpersonal Communication

The records show that the crew constantly communicated and the captain was in good humor, evidently, thus trying to relieve the tension. The flight stewards were informing the captain about the problems on board, the flight engineer has informed the captain about the shattered tail section, the second officer was trying to find the information about how to deal with the failures of the hydraulic system and was constantly reporting to the captain, as well as he assessed the damage to the wing as soon as the flight steward has reported about this and commented on it to the captain. In general, there was hardly a moment when the crew members remained silent. This shows that the success of the CRM consisted in ensuring the proper level of leadership and interpersonal communication that helped to effectively solve the problem.

Saving More Human Lives

If the crew predicted the raising of the right-wing during the landing, then, probably, more human lives could have been saved. Or, perhaps, if the problems with hydraulics have been noticed earlier, a more successful landing could have been performed. Nevertheless, the fact that the airplane managed to land in the airport, where the fire brigades and the medics have been waiting for them, helped to save 185 lives, which is a great number taking into account the technical problems that the airplane had.

The Communication Process

In the case of such disasters, the involvement of any people who can help is extremely important. It so happened that a training officer was on board the United Airlines Flight 232. However, only the involvement of the flying attendants and crew members is not always enough to survive in the disaster. The help of the air traffic controllers is more than vital for these people have to give directions to the pilots quickly and clearly (U. S. Department of Labor, 2008). The crew actively communicated with air traffic controllers to find out where they could land, so that minimum of human lives could be lost, which has also contributed greatly to performing the successful landing.

The Effect on the Training Systems

The United Airlines Flight 232 Accident had several long-term effects on our current training systems and methods. First of all, a more or less successful landing under such conditions is almost impossible, which makes training useless; it was discovered that much depends on the crew’s behavior. This served as a good reason for introducing certain changes into the CRM programs. More attention started to be paid to the interpersonal communication between the crew members; the rule that the captain was the one who could be right was once and for all abolished (by 1980 this was the rule according to which most of the crews were working; United Airlines Flight 232’s captain was trained not to follow this rule, which proved to be beneficial).

Conclusion

Therefore, it has been shown that owing to the successful CRM, the crew of the United Airlines Flight 232 managed to preserve the lives of more than half of the passengers. The crew’s effective strategy, the proper level of interpersonal communication, and their ability to stay calm in stressful situations all account for saving numerous human lives on 19 July 1989.

Reference

Krause, S.S. (2003). Aircraft safety: accident investigations, analyses, and applications. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional.

National Fire Protection Association. (2005). Aircraft Accidents that Caused Major Changes to Emergency Response Equipment and Procedures. Web.

National Transportation Safety Board. (1989). Aircraft Accident Report. Web.

Okray, R., Lubnau, T., and Lubnau, T. II. (2004). Crew resource management for the fire service. Tulsa: PennWell Books.

U.S. Department of Labor. (2008). Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2009. New York: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.

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