Photo by Andrés Dallimonti on Unsplash

A Tale of Two Teams in Crisis: Different Leadership Styles, Different Outcomes

The quantity of books, articles, blog posts, and other writing and speaking about leadership continues to rapidly expand, and it’s not surprising. Even with a lot of great ideas in circulation, effective and compassionate leadership is still a relatively rare commodity. In Four-Star General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal’s book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, he, along with co-authors Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell, share many real-world experiences of their own, and also offer interesting insights based on others’ experience. In that latter category, they describe two high-stress situations that commercial airline crews encountered, where the leadership styles, and the outcomes, were significantly different:

• United Flight 173
• US Airways Flight 1549

Let’s start with a summary of events for each of the two flights, and then conclude by comparing and contrasting them in terms of leadership styles and outcomes.

United Flight 173

• Date: December 28, 1978
• Departing from: John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York
• Destination: Portland, Oregon (with stop-over in Denver)
• Number of passengers: 181
• Aircraft type: Douglas DC-8
• Number of engines: 4
• Aircraft age: 10 years
• Flight crew size: 8 people
• Weather conditions (in Portland): 30 miles visibility, little wind, scattered clouds

Nothing out of the ordinary happened on United Flight 173, until, about 5:00 PM, as the aircraft neared Portland, an indicator light failed to come on. As the book authors point out, “A piston on the right main landing gear had given out as it was lowered into landing position and had damaged the indicator system. As a result, the light did not illuminate even though the landing gear was down and locked in place.” (To be clear, what was happening with the piston was not a level of detail that would or could have been obvious to the pilots, based on the indicator light alone; the only other thing that was out of the ordinary, other than the indicator light failure, was that the landing gear dropped a little more quickly than usual, an audible “thump” was heard, and there was a momentary yaw to the right of the aircraft.)

To summarize what happened next:

• The flight crew radioed the control tower to report the problem, and to state that they would enter a holding pattern so they could diagnose the problem
• While in the holding pattern, the pilots discussed what to do next, while consulting the applicable technical directives (flight/aircraft manual)
• The pilots agreed that the gear was down (which could be checked via visual inspection)
• The Captain insisted that making a contingency plan for a rough landing should be the focus of all conversation, while switching his attention between communication with the rest of the flight crew, the control tower, and the aircraft manufacturer
• The aircraft completed its first pass in the holding pattern, and as it approached the airport a second time, yielded its position to another flight
• While continuing to debate among themselves, going into (unnecessary) detail on the relative competencies to handle the situation of individual flight attendants, and what conditions might be like on the runway, they yielded a second time, to a different flight that was in a holding pattern
• United Flight 173 circled the airport again, did another round of checks with the passengers, continued to discuss details on the ground and in the cockpit, and prepared to land

Seventy minutes had now elapsed, from the time the indicator failed to light, until the moment when United Flight 173 informed the control tower that they were preparing to make their approach. Unfortunately, they had by this time just about expended their spare fuel capacity. The Captain had been so focused on preparing for a rough landing that he had not paid attention to one of the most basic and important indicators: the fuel gauge.

As United Flight 173 made visual contact with the runway, two of the engines failed, as the fuel ran out. The Captain requested instant approach, and they began to seek other options, such as landing on a nearby highway. Two minutes later, at 6:13 PM, they lost the other two engines, and declared “Mayday.”

Two minutes after that, United Flight 173 crash-landed just outside of Portland, passing through two houses and lots of trees, and skidding for about 1,500 feet. Since the aircraft was out of fuel, there was no fire. Unfortunately, 8 passengers, the flight engineer (who had been monitoring the fuel gauge), and a flight attendant died, and 24 people were seriously injured.

US Airways Flight 1549

• Date: January 15, 2009
• Departing from: Laguardia Airport, New York
• Destination: Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (with stop-over in Charlotte)
• Number of passengers: 150
• Aircraft type: Airbus A-320
• Number of engines: 2
• Aircraft age: 10 years
• Flight crew size: 5 people
• Weather conditions (in New York): 10 miles visibility, 9-knot wind, a few clouds

In stark contrast to United 173, US Airways 1549 had barely taken flight, when at 3:37 PM, it struck a flock of Canadian Geese during its ascent. Due to this “bird strike,” US Airways 1549 lost both of its engines, about five miles northwest of the airport (an event which has been portrayed in numerous ways since, including in the film Sully). Other than exploding in mid-air, there are few things more calamitous to a jumbo jet than losing power to all of its engines. As the book authors describe it:

Barely two thousand feet above the ground, the crew had only moments to respond. All emergency checklists and technical training designed to confront engine failures were premised on the assumption that such a failure would transpire at cruising altitude above twenty thousand feet — an incapacitating event so low was unprecedented.

What follows is a brief overview of what happened next:

• With both engines having shut down, the Captain took control, while the First Officer followed the checklist for engine restart.
• The aircraft continued to climb for another 20 second or so, reaching at altitude of about 3,060 feet, at an airspeed of a little more than 200 mph
• The Captain made a Mayday call to the control tower, which directed US Airways 1549 to return to the airport on Runway 13
• It was quickly determined that not only was Laguardia unreachable, so was Teterboro Airport in New Jersey
• Only 90 seconds later, at 3:31 PM, United Airways 1549 made an uncontrolled “ditching” in the Hudson River

As anyone who has seen the film or read accounts of the event knows, everybody survived. The passengers were evacuated through the overwing window exists and an inflatable slide raft, and were soon rescued. Fortunately for them, the pilots had ditched the aircraft in reasonable proximity to two waterway ferries, and all passengers were on-board one of the ferries by 3:55 PM. Most of the passengers had minor injuries, and five passengers had serious injuries.

Differences in Outcomes

It’s easiest to summarize the difference between the two flights in terms of outcomes, so let’s begin there:

United 173 had crashed despite having an hour of spare fuel, no incapacitating technical issues, and clear protocols for dealing with a landing gear failure. US Airways 1549 saved all of its passengers and crew minutes after encountering an unprecedented and critical issue for which they had no technical preparation at all.

Differences in Leadership Styles

As it turned out, differences in leadership styles proved to make a huge difference:

There were innumerable differences between the circumstances and individuals on these two flights that might have contributed to the different outcomes, and some were beyond human control. One clear difference, however, … In 1978 airline crews were structured as a command: [the Captain] oversaw and divided responsibilities, assigned tasks, and issued orders in a system designed for efficiency; in a crisis each and every crew member turned to him and awaited guidance. By 2009, effective airline crews were meant to function as teams … if [the Captain] had to devise and issue individual sequential instructions to every member of the crew in the few minutes they had to act, Flight 1549 might not have made it. The structural and functional distinctions between commands and teams have serious ramifications for adaptability.

If we take another look at the wording above — “divided responsibilities, assigned tasks, and issued orders” — it’s not hard for many of us to think of cases where we’ve seen that style of leadership. In certain cases, that style may still be relevant, but in the vast majority of “knowledge work” (and similar) situations, the “command and control” style has been shown time and again to be not only ineffective, but harmful, in areas such as team morale, and overall team performance.

Also, significantly, the crisis in the case of United 1573 was of their own making. They had ample fuel, and could have landed safely, had it not been for the Captain’s lack of attention to their fuel supply, along with choosing to follow the task-driven approach that was characteristic of flight crews at the time. In other words, the flow of information between the Captain and the rest of the crew was almost entirely one-way in the case of United 1573; by way of contrast, in the case of US Airways 1549, it would have looked and sounded much more like a conversation, albeit a conversation with a very high degree of urgency.

Crew Resource Management

Because the airline industry recognized that they had a problem, due to United 1573, and other events that had occurred, sometimes with tragic consequences, a number of organizations got involved in an effort to make operational changes, including the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Federal Aviation Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). What they were reacting to, above all else, was the NTSB finding that United 1573 (among others) pointed to a “recurring problem — a breakdown in cockpit management and teamwork during a situation involving malfunctions of aircraft systems in flight.”

Among the changes that were introduced, starting with United Airlines in 1981, was a program that had been designed in consultation with social psychologists, sociologists, and many other subject matter experts. The program came to (much later) be called Crew Resource Management (CRM). Despite the fact that it was less than enthusiastically received (to say the least) by many pilots, CRM made a positive difference.

It trained juniors to speak more assertively and captains to be less forceful, turning vertical command-and-control relationships into flexible, multidirectional, communicative bonds. Instructors exhausted students with team-building exercises. They complemented flight simulators and technical training with … emphasis on trust and purpose.

As an example of the positive impact from CRM, and the differing leadership behaviors that emerged from it, the authors share the example of United Flight 232, which departed from Stapleton International Airport in Denver on July 19, 1989, en route to Philadelphia, with a scheduled stop in Chicago. In that instance, an engine disintegrated, and the shrapnel from that took out the aircraft’s hydraulic system, with an important result being that the pilots could not use the wing flaps to steer the aircraft.

The chances of such an event were considered so remote that no safety procedure had been designed for it. But the CRM-trained crew on Flight 232, working together with an instructor pilot who had been onboard as a passenger, devised and implemented a plan to keep the airplane under some degree of control by manipulating the differential and continual thrust of the two remaining engines. With no functional steering mechanism and no plan for how to deal with such an event, the crew managed to crash-land the plane in Sioux City, Iowa, saving the lives of 185 of the 296 people onboard. When replicated in a simulator, it was found to be impossible to successfully maintain control and guide the airplane safely onto a runway using engine thrust alone.

Conclusion

It would be an exaggeration to say that the only thing that mattered in terms of the different outcomes of the flights mentioned above was the leadership style among the members of the flight crew. Each situation was different in numerous ways, from the technical to the inter-personal, not to mention the skills and abilities of the pilots. That said, there is clear evidence to suggest that a very directive style of leadership was a key factor, and arguably was the most important reason, that United 173 crash-landed. And, we can also see that in the case of the other two flights, a free flow of communication and sharing of ideas was an important factor, and that what easily could have been a loss of all passengers and crew, on both aircraft, had a much different outcome.