Team resilience in emergency response: analytical framework and study of air transport accident reports

Objective: Emergency response and resilience are critical to air transport due to their role in ensuring the safety of people and assets. In most accidents, the performance of the cockpit team plays a significant role in restoring the operations or minimizing the loss. The team resilience in the transport sector as a whole is understudied. We seeks to identify the influential factors in cockpit team resilience and analyze their effect on team performance in air transport emergency and crisis.

Design/methodology/approach: A team resilience analysis framework is utilized, adopted from other resilience studies. The OODA LOOP model is applied to evaluate the team performance in emergency situations in three recent air transport accidents.

Findings: The analysis found that team communication and coordination were among the key issues to emergency response. This is traced back to cockpit resource management training and its effectiveness in improving onboard team performance and leadership. The effect of team-related factors such as unity and culture, on team resilience is also highlighted.