TOWARDS THE ZERO ACCIDENT GOAL: ASSISTING THE FIRST OFFICER MONITOR AND CHALLENGE CAPTAIN ERRORS

INTRODUCTION

In a hierarchical organization, the boss's authority in the work function can be
more or less absolute. In 1963, the eminent social psychologist Stanley Milgram
measured the strength of the United States society authority. He found that it was
about much stronger than expected - a psychology experimenter was able to make
subjects carry out orders that led to the simulated injury and death of a confederate.
Such strong authority tends to create situations in which errors made by authorities will
not be corrected. In particular, this is the case in the airplane cockpit: a disproportionate
number of accidents occur with the captain flying erroneously and the first officer failing
to monitor and challenge the captain errors.

We make the case that any lack of monitoring and challenging of the captain by
the first officer is due to the already well documented difficulty of monitoring and
challenging authority in our society. The Milgram experiments are described briefly,
specific connections between the experiment and the authority structure in the airplane
cockpits are made and using this frame work an accident is analyzed more closely
using a cockpit voice recording. We make a numerical estimate of how often inadequate
monitoring and challenging errors results in accidents. Finally, we suggest ways to
achieve the proper amount of monitoring and challenging by use of a simple "monitoring
and challenging optimization" technique during LOFT.

1. THE SOURCES OF THE CAPTAIN’S AUTHORITY

IN THE UNITED STATES COMMERCIAL AIRPLANE COCKPIT

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