Monday Accidents & Lessons Learned: When a Critical Team Meets the Unexpected

Teamwork can break down or go awry in difficult circumstances. During normal operations, team members adhere to policy for their roles, but a single incident can challenge or splinter even the most prepared team. Flight passengers can create a variety of circumstances that require quick and exceptional thinking and action; many of these circumstances are not delineated or addressed in the Quick Reference Handbook (QRH) or by company policy.

This happened to an air carrier crew in an aircraft on the runway awaiting takeoff. The crew was suddenly caught up in a passenger’s panic-stricken, emotionally charged request to deplane. CALLBACK, from NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System, allows us six crew debriefing perspectives from this incident. From the First Officer’s report to both Flight Attendants’ summaries, we can view and, using TapRooT@ Techniques, interact with the complications that accompanied each vantage point.