Contributing to Aviation Safety: Crew Resource Management Training for Flight Attendants

Crew resource management (CRM) trainings are a mandatory and accepted part of crew training in aviation. The focus of CRM trainings are non-technical competencies and the goal is to improve team coordination and task performance and to reduce human error.
Over the past three decades, a considerable body of research has been generated on the necessary non-technical competencies, the design of CRM training, and its effectiveness. But a closer look reveals that virtually no studies deal with CRM training for flight attendants, although their safety role is crucial and training is an important expense factor for airlines. Furthermore, a questionnaire study within the KTI/CTI project "Innovative further development, scientific validation and implementation of human factors and crew resource management training for aviation and non-aviation industries" (Project partners: Swiss International Air Lines Ltd. and Swiss Aviation Training Ltd.) revealed that flight attendants enjoy CRM trainings less, find them less useful, judge their knowledge gain to be lower, have a less positive attitude towards CRM and judge the instructional design less positive than pilots.
This research proposal thus presents a structured approach to cabin CRM training to answer the questions what non-technical competencies should be trained, how training should be designed, how transfer of training can be supported and how effective CRM trainings for cabin crew members are.
Non-technical competencies and behavioral markers for cabin crew members were derived and used to design a competency-based introductory cabin CRM training. Design focused on approved instructional principles with a special emphasis on problem-based learning and application of learned skills. Competencies covered are 1) situation awareness, 2) shared understanding, 3) information exchange and communication, 4) passenger management, 5) assertiveness and 6) stress management. Furthermore, four comics depicting realistic CRM-related incidents were developed as transfer support measure. Starting in June 2010, a quasi-experimental study to investigate the effectiveness of the competency-based CRM training was conducted, using two control groups receiving the former introductory cabin CRM training of SWISS and two experimental groups receiving the competency-based training. Data collection continued until November 2010. Preliminary results show a positive effect of the competency-based training on knowledge and behavior, and the project partners adopted the competency-based introductory CRM training as standard for all novice flight attendants in August 2010.

During a stay at the University of Aberdeen (Prof. Rhona Flin) from Feb. 2011 to Jan. 2012, data analysis will be finalized to finish the dissertation and publish relevant journal articles.