At first, the question was how a person could control an aircraft. As flying became a complex system, another question emerged: how do people, procedures, and aircraft work together?
1903 · KITTY HAWKThree axes, 37 metres
Orville and Wilbur Wright sought control around the aircraft’s three axes. On 17 December, Orville flew about 37 metres in 12 seconds; the last flight that day covered roughly 260 metres. Their achievement placed control of the aircraft at the heart of flight.
1927 · ATLANTICLindbergh and the lone pilot
Charles Lindbergh flew alone from New York to Paris in the Spirit of St. Louis. Fuel tanks ahead of the cockpit blocked his direct forward view: he looked through a periscope or out of a side window. His achievement became emblematic of an era in which so much depended on the judgement and endurance of one pilot.
1937 · PACIFICEarhart and navigation
Amelia Earhart had made remarkable solo flights, but navigator Fred Noonan accompanied her on her final flight. They disappeared while trying to reach Howland Island. Their story brings navigation, communication, and the limits of available information into focus. The circumstances of their disappearance remain an open historical question.
From military aviation to airline flying
During the twentieth century, the careers of military and airline pilots sometimes overlapped. Experience and discipline learned in one setting could be carried into the other. From a psychological perspective, this raises a question: how do authority, communication, and decision making adapt when the safety of an airline flight depends on the whole crew? This perspective traces how cockpit culture came under closer examination.
Two aircraft on one runway
At Tenerife airport, two Boeing 747s, one operated by KLM and the other by Pan Am, collided. The KLM aircraft began its takeoff before receiving clearance while the Pan Am aircraft was still taxiing on the runway. In fog and airport congestion, the takeoff continued after the flight engineer asked about the other aircraft’s position. 583 people died. The case showed the importance of verification, clear communication, and the ability to challenge a decision in the cockpit.
1978 · PORTLANDUnited Airlines Flight 173
A United Airlines DC-8 held for nearly an hour while the crew investigated a landing gear problem. Their attention to that problem displaced fuel monitoring. The engines stopped and the aircraft crashed near Portland; ten people died. The investigation highlighted the other crew members’ difficulty in clearly conveying the urgency of the fuel situation to the captain.
1979 → BEYONDA vocabulary for teamwork
In 1979, NASA brought the industry together for a workshop on cockpit resource management. Training gradually expanded from CRM (Crew Resource Management), communication and crew decision making, to TEM (Threat and Error Management), threat and error management, and LOSA (Line Operations Safety Audit), structured observation of line operations. These are distinct concepts, all connected to understanding flight as a shared activity.
From the Wright brothers’ work on aircraft control to CRM, the view of safety came to include the people who operate the aircraft together.
