Changing Cockpit Culture: Why We Fired Capt. Kirk

March 29, 2005 — -- How fast would you turn around and get off a big commercial jetliner if there was no co-pilot and the captain was planning to fly alone? Even though big airliners can be easily flown by one pilot, most of us would beat feet back to the terminal simply because the concept feels so unsettling.

Yet before the early 1980s, most airline flights worldwide might as well have had only one pilot because our so-called cockpit culture dictated that the captain was an absolute commander and everyone else followed. In fact, we were all taught to be like Capt. James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise, a commander who needed no advice from anyone, least of all his co-pilot.

You probably remember Capt. Kirk from the original 1960s "Star Trek" series, which you still see in reruns. Kirk had all the answers to all the questions all the time and expected himself to be error-free. But he had a dangerous professional flaw: Kirk, like all of us airline pilots, was a carbon-based human virtually incapable of being perfect -- yet he was the very model of the traditional airline captain.

But wait a minute: Any system that routinely expects imperfect humans to perform without making mistakes is dangerously delusional. Mistakes and errors will still be made, regardless of our best efforts. If we don't build our safety systems to expect them and safely absorb them, a single error can metastasize like a cancer into a major accident. And clearly, an airline captain whose subordinate crew members are unable or unwilling to point out his mistakes is flying the plane by himself.

Throughout the '60s and '70s there was a steady drumbeat of airline crashes in which a subordinate pilot had the very information that would have prevented disaster but couldn't pass it on to the all-knowing captain.