TK CRM and a new video section!

I had not been to work for two weeks, due to the holidays around christmas and New Year and so it was time to go to Frankfurt again to finally do something for money! As you already know we pilots have to go to the simulator a lot and there are check rides on the aircraft, but sometimes we also have to attend ground school – seminars, courses and workshops. I have to attend a Crew Resource Management workshop (TK CRM – don’t ask me what TK stands for) that once again reminds you how to work together in the cockpit and more importantly how to resolve problems and maintain an atmosphere that suits our safety culture!

Lufthansa has a training center at Frankfurt Airport where crews from around the world are being taught on every aspect of aviation. Lots of airlines rely on our expertise and knowledge and two flight schools are also based here (Intercockpit and Flight Crew Academy). Three trainers to care of us 15 pilots attending the seminar, all of them highly experienced captains at Lufthansa and in the CRM training business for many years. We started with some of the basics (what is CRM and what is it good for), before getting deeper into the subject of safety culture. An interesting part of the whole thing was 1,5 hours of a joint session with some ATC controllers! Finally we had the time to get in contact with some of our colleagues from the other end of the radio. Some of the pilots had never met a controller in 30 years of flying and it was a good chance to finally ask some questions we always wanted to ask. The last part of the seminar gave some good advice on how to ensure good CRM is always used and how to deal with problems.

There have been a few developments regarding my video activity as well! I have uploaded my first cockpit video taken with my GoPro to youtube, showing a Boeing 737 on approach to Manchester’s runway 23R. It was just a very quick try of the camera and video software and I promise that future videos will be better 😉 There is now a link to my youtube channel below the menu on the left side and a new menu item called “Videos” (I know, very creative!). And here is the video:

My next trip will take me to Tel Aviv and Istanbul and will start in a few days! I am really looking forward to this and if everything goes well, I will be able to spend two days with my lovely fiancé in Istanbul and take some great cockpit videos during the night as well!