2017 Swiftair incident highlights CRM and automation concerns

In September 2017, a Swiftair ATR 72-500 operating from Alicante-Madrid stalled while climbing through 17,000 feet in icing conditions. The crew was able to recover, but one passenger was injured in the incident. The investigation revealed that the crew was relying entirely on automation, and the captain appeared to not realize they were stalled.

The crew had received a weather report that icing was present between 14,000-15,000 over waypoint NARGO. The icing turned out to be worse than reported, but the crew failed to carry out any checklists. As the aircraft stopped climbing due to icing, the crew put the autopilot into modes prohibited in icing, and increased the power to continue the climb. The captain was the PNF, but carried out tasks that the first officer should have as the pilot flying.

www.flightglobal.com...

Unusual with the checklists as a lot of the overseas airlines train to fly by checklists and rote memorization along with systems management and not much in the way of actually flying the aircraft. This is often why they get confused when things don't happen 'by the book'.

a reply to: Flipper35

That's where the CRM aspect came in. The captain was a fairly high time captain, with a low time first officer. That combination tends to result in the FO being afraid to open their mouth, unless you hammer CRM and its importance home.

I understand that, and they pound it in during training here in the US, but a lot of overseas (maybe not in this case) all they pound in is checklist, checklist, checklist which is why I found it odd they did not use the checklist. Some in the far east still defer to the captain no matter what though too.

CRM and being able to think on the fly is one of the things that sets our training and regulations apart from a lot of RoW.

a reply to: Flipper35

Even here CRM is breaking down. After Tenerife it was all CRM, all the time. Now everyone is getting complacent again and we're seeing incredibly stupid incidents that there's no excuse for.

Because everyone tends to forget stuff and then repeat it.