The epic tale, “Skygods: The Fall of Pan Am” by Robert Gandt is a must read for all pilots in crewed aircraft. It is, simply put, the best treatise for why Crew Resource Management is so vital in any cockpit with more than one person. If I were teaching a class in CRM, I would buy a copy of this book for every student and make it mandatory reading. You will learn how captains came to be called captains, why so much of how a cockpit used to be managed had parallels with ocean liners, and how the history of crewed airplanes is paved in blood. Oh yes, about Pan Am. You will also learn how Juan Trippe managed to drag the world into transoceanic airline travel and the aerospace industry into passenger carrying jets. But I am here for the CRM lessons. Before that, however, two definitions. A “Skygod” was the imperial captain, whose word must not be challenged. A “Master of Ocean Flying Boats” was a Pan Am rank awarded to the best captains from the airline’s early flying boat days.
— James Albright
Updated:
2024-04-08
The first eleven chapters do a great job of painting the history of early commercial aviation through the advent of jet airliners and the venerable Boeing 707. As the world’s premier air carrier, everyone except the first officers flying the airplanes were stunned to learn of yet another Pan Am Boeing 707 loss. As Robert Gandt puts it, “Pan Am was littering the islands of the Pacific with the hulks of Boeing jetliners.”
History Repeats Itself?
When I first read Skygods, my first thought was, thank goodness those days are over. I had experienced many of the same problems that ended up with Boeing 707 on the bottom of the Pacific. In fact, many of my examples were in the Boeing 707 flying over the Pacific. But not all. Worse yet, however, is that I continue to hear about Skygods still flying today.
“That damn checklist.”
When I was a copilot who had not yet been exposed to life as a captain, I did fly with a few relics who insisted that the checklist was for lesser beings. Of course, they joined the ranks of lesser beings when being subjected to check rides. The crash of a Gulfstream GIV in Bedford, Massachusetts back in 2014 is the most notable example in recent history, but not the only example. I still get letters from pilots saying checklists are not allowed.
"Forget that damn checklist, son," a captain once told Rob Martinside. "You're not flying for Pan American today. You're flying for me."
“It’s smoother.”
Flying at altitudes above the aircraft’s ceiling or below optimal cruise altitudes is something I continue to hear about. One of the strangest stories is from a friend who was paired with a captain who insisted on over-pressurizing the aircraft to make it “fatter” with a tailwind, or under-pressurizing it to make it “skinnier” with a headwind.
One of Lou Cogliani's idiosyncrasies had been that he wanted his airplane flown everywhere, over the ocean or on airways, one hundred feet off the assigned altitude. "It's smoother," he explained. "No one else is flying at that altitude, stirring up the air."
“It saves electricity”
My first civilian job featured a chief pilot, let’s call him Gary because that was his name, who would explode with rage whenever I failed to turn off the aircraft position lights above 10,000 feet. (I never failed to leave them on and he never failed to explode with rage.) Gary also insisted the radar be turned off when the weather appeared clear, even though the manufacturer said flying with the radar off could damage it. I still get questions from pilots asking about this technique. As we used to say in one of my squadrons, “It’s a technique. It's a stupid technique, but it is a technique.”
Hud Gibson, a portly and mean-spirited captain, was conservation minded. He ordered his crews to turn off every nonessential radio, light, instrument, and navigation device. "It saves electricity," he said, sitting in his blacked-out and nearly radioless cockpit.
“Sublime, shady comfort”
I was asked to fly with a senior KC-135A crew on a navigation competition even though I was a fairly new copilot. I wanted to make a good impression and vowed to keep my mouth shut until the captain proceeded to tape navigation charts over all the cockpit windows to keep the sun out of his eyes. When I read the following in Skygods, it brought back some not-so-fond memories.
Some captains scheduled themselves exclusively on the round-the-world route, a week-long journey that took them completely around the planet. But they would do it in only one direction-east-bound, because in the northern hemisphere the annoying rays of the sun always beat on the right side of the cockpit, the first officer's side. Other captains didn't bother with such complications. They taped navigation charts over the windscreen and all the windows on their side. They flew around the earth in sublime, shady comfort with the sun-and everything else-blocked from view.
“Keep your impertinent, newly hired mouth shut”
We once hired a FlightSafety instructor who prided himself on his CRM skills, he had taught the course for years after all. Of his many faults, the one that stands out to those of us who flew with him was that he could not admit to being wrong. I saw a lot of this in the old days, but the “captain is always right” idea persists.
Approaching Honolulu, Cogliani commenced his descent from altitude too late, ignoring Wood's reminder about their rapidly diminishing distance from the airport. Too high for the approach, Cogliani had to fly a circle to lose altitude. Then he overshot the localizer, the final approach course. Honolulu Approach Control vectored them back onto an approach course straight into the runway. At fifteen hundred feet above the field, the captain had still not called for the landing gear down. Wood kept his silence. A thousand feet. Still no gear. Jim Wood bit his lip and said nothing. At six hundred feet, Wood could stand no more. "Do you want the landing gear down, captain?"
Cogliani glowered at him. "Landing gear? Goddammit, I'll tell you when I want the gear down." Two and one-half seconds later, with a great deal of authority, he told him. "Gear down!" No one, not even a new hire like Jim Wood, would dare suggest that the captain-a Master of Ocean Flying Boats-might actually have forgotten to lower his landing gear. Instead, Wood did something even more foolish. He laughed.
Three days later, in the chief pilot's office, Wood received his first lesson in Skygod protocol. The chief-the craggy-faced man who had welcomed Wood's class to Pan American-regarded the young man over the tops of his own half-frames. "Do you want to keep your job, son?" "Yes, sir." "Then get this. You will sit there and raise and lower the captain's landing gear-on command-and keep your impertinent, newly hired mouth shut. Clear?" "Yes, sir."
The Birth of Crew Resource Management
There is no doubt that Pan American World Airways blazed many trails for us in commercial aviation. But there is also no doubt that many of the lessons learned came from their bad examples before they figured it all out. The best way to illustrate this is by quoting from several pages of the book. With that, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from the book.
The Bali calamity brought Pan Am's 707 losses to eleven. Pan Am had crashed more Boeing jets than any other carrier in the world. Something had to be done. Before the smoke subsided from the burning wreckage on Mount Patas in Bali, the probe of Pan American's flight operations had begun. Inspectors from the Federal Aviation Administration climbed aboard Pan Arn Clippers all over the world, FAA men rode in cockpits, pored through maintenance records, asked questions, observed check rides and training flights.
The inspection went on for six weeks. The FAA's findings confirmed the dismal facts that the internal Operations Review Group had already determined: Pan Am was crashing airplanes at three times the average rate of the United States airlines. Worse, Pan Am's accident rate was on the rise, a reverse of the steadily decreasing industry-wide accident experience with jet airliners.
The report was scathing. Pan Am's accidents in the Pacific, declared the FAA, involved "substandard airmen." Training was inadequate, and there was a lack of standardization among crews. But at the heart of Pan Am's troubles, according to the FAA, were human factors. That was the trendy new term psychologists were using in accident reports. It meant people who screwed up. When applied to airline cockpits, it had the same taint as pilot error.
The indictment landed in Skygod country like a canister of tear gas. Substandard airmen? Wait a minute, you bureaucratic piss ants ... this is Pan American, the world's most experienced airline. . . we were the first to fly jets, the first to . . . That was then, said the Feds. This is now. Clean up your act, or you will be the world's most grounded airline.
Pilots' training and performance histories were reviewed. A list of over a hundred senior pilots with spotty records was compiled. Quietly, with much dignity, the old pelicans received a gentle but emphatic shove into retirement. But the most profound change was still coming. It was an invisible transformation and it had more to do with philosophy than with procedure. Pan Am was forced to peer into its own soul and answer previously unasked questions. Instead of What's wrong with the way we fly airplanes? the question became What's wrong with the way we manage our cockpits?
A new term was coming into play: crew concept. The idea was that crews were supposed to function as management teams, not autocracies with a supreme captain and two or three minions. It meant the captain was still the captain, but he no longer had the divine license to crash his airplane without the consent of his crew. Copilots and flight engineers-lowly new hires-were now empowered to speak up. Their opinions actually counted for something.
Disagree? With the captain? In the sanctums of the Skygods, it amounted to anarchy. Hadn't the Masters of Ocean Flying Boats labored for thirty years to preserve the cult of the Skygod? The barbarians were storming the gates. But history was running against the ancient Skygods. Though Pan American technology had led the world into the jet age, Pan Am's cockpits had not emerged from the flying boat days. A new era, like it or not, was upon them. The Skygods were about to become as extinct as pterodactyls.
The cockpit transformation came down to two separate problems. The first was to de-autocratize the cockpit-to dismantle the Skygod ethic. Pan Am captains must master the subtle distinction between commanding and managing. Junior pilots must learn to participate in the decision-making process. This was revolutionary. Pan Am copilots actually having an opinion. The other problem was standardization. There wasn't any. Pilots from the unregulated, make-the-rules-as-you-go-along flying boat days were inherently nonstandard. They were, by God, supposed to be different. Flying was a game for individuals-chest-thumping, throttle pushing, flint-eyed Masters of-Ocean-Flying Boats-not compliant drones.
The newer breed of airmen had come from a different environment. High-tech airplanes demanded a collaborative effort from their crews. Uniqueness in a pilot was okay, but it ought to be manifested by excellence, by a mastery of technical skill, rather than by eccentricity. The magic word standardization brought eventual relief. It meant that everybody operated the airplane the same way. Total strangers, captains, first officers, flight engineers-could check in for a flight, enter the cockpit, and work in total harmony. They could fly the airplane around the world-and each would know what the other would do. Gone were the surprises.
It would take time to change an ethic so deeply embedded in the airline's skin, but there was no choice. It had to work. And it did. The nightmare was over. From 1974, following the Bali crash, not another Pan Am 707 was lost in a crash.
