# Tenerife Disaster -- 40 Years Later **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 27, 2017, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tenerife-disaster-40-years-later/783146 "2017-03-27T16:24:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tenerife-disaster-40-years-later/783146/41 "2017-03-29T23:37:14Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > CRM saves lives in any safety-critical situation, whether it’s surgery, firefighting, or flying a plane… I’m not sure this is correct. In a very time critical situation (ie in a plane with a matter of seconds to think) having someone urgently feeding you information can be a distraction. Don’t forget that it is just as possible for the pilot to be correct and the co-pilot to be incorrect as the other way around. Edited to add: I’m not saying CRM is a bad thing; on balance I think it does substantially more good than harm. But I think it’s incorrect to make a blanket statement. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tenerife-disaster-40-years-later/783146/42 "2017-03-30T03:09:56Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > I’m not sure this is correct. In a very time critical situation (ie in a plane with a matter of seconds to think) having someone urgently feeding you information can be a distraction. Don’t forget that it is just as possible for the pilot to be correct and the co-pilot to be incorrect as the other way around. > > Edited to add: I’m not saying CRM is a bad thing; on balance I think it does substantially more good than harm. But I think it’s incorrect to make a blanket statement. CRM training accounts for this, or tries to at least. If something is very time critical the captain would be expected to act “alone” initially. For example, in a high speed rejected take-off there is no discussion about what to do, it is just done. CRM is not just about having a love-in with all the other people around you, it’s about using the the most appropriate resources to come to the best decision you can. In the case of a rejected take-off the only _appropriate_ resources available are your own experience, training, and the company SOPs. Acting alone at an appropriate time is still good CRM, even if you make the wrong decision. Acting alone when you don’t need to would be bad CRM and asking for someone’s advice on what to do when there is no time for discussion is also bad CRM. As you point out, CRM is not perfect, primarily because it is used by people and people are not perfect, but it tries its best to make up for the worst aspects of human performance. Some people can be very good at using CRM techniques naturally without any formal training and other people are hopeless at it regardless of how much training they get. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tenerife-disaster-40-years-later/783146/43 "2017-03-30T07:24:28Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > Some people can be very good at using CRM techniques naturally without any formal training and other people are hopeless at it regardless of how much training they get. Which I find to be true of any management technique or systematic approach to anything. There’s people to whom it will come naturally, some who will never get it, and then there’s the group for which the manual was written: those who would never have thought about it, but who will learn it when it’s explained. One of my pet terrors is what happens when someone who doesn’t get it happens to be auditing it, which is the business version of that teacher who got stuck teaching math when he could barely do substraction without using his fingers. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tenerife-disaster-40-years-later/783146/44 "2017-03-30T08:15:35Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > What bugs me is that incidents like this, like the Titanic, like the Apollo 1 fire, like the Challenger, all are the kickstarters for long-overdue improvements in policies, procedures or design that lead to greater safety. I hate that it takes such a loss of life to get people to do things that they should have always been doing. > > Sometimes I dream of going back in time, warn the Titanic, advise the ATC folk on Tenerife, stop the large loss of life. And yet, I fear that if I were successful, if these incidents hadn’t happened, that things would have stayed the way they were, and some other disaster would have happened, maybe a larger one. Maybe these things are necessary for human nature to shake off its complacency? Nothing else can get through? I wish it were not so. Aside: There was a Sherlock Holmes SF pastiche where he and Watson are approached by time travelers who want to stop a fellow chrononaut from saving the Titanic and erasing their home timeline. This point was never brought up, but I thought the same thing. Then I realized that Holmes and Watson would probably recoil at the idea of not preventing X known, guaranteed deaths to save a completely hypothetical number later that may or may not be larger, if they EVER happen. It’s like the classic railroad switch philosophical exercise. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tenerife-disaster-40-years-later/783146.md?page=2)