On 1 June 2009 Air France AF447 an Airbus A330 departed Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for Paris, France. 3 hours and 6 minutes into the flight all contact was lost with the aircraft. 

Telemetry sent from the aircraft to Air France maintenance just prior to “loss of contact” showed a large number of faults being displayed to the pilots on the aircrafts ECAM (Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor) warning display. Search and rescue began from both sides of the Atlantic. Wreckage was subsequently spotted in the Atlantic Ocean by a Brazilian Airforce aircraft. 

There were no survivors.  

As Air France had suffered a number of aircraft accidents over the years, an audit of their operations was conducted by a team of International Aviation safety experts. After the team presented their findings to Air France it was determined that a change in culture was required so a program called “La Trajectore” was formulated. 

This was to be in the form of a series of lectures in CRM (Crew Resource Management) to be presented to all Air France pilots at the Le Borget Air and Space Museum.

At the time the audit team were presenting their findings the Qantas QF32 incident occurred. 

QF32 was an uncontained engine explosion on an almost new Airbus A380 super jumbo. Like the Air France incident, the crew were presented with an overwhelming number of ECAM warnings. 

Unlike the Air France incident, the Qantas aircraft landed safely. 

Everyone survived.

As the La Trajectore team were formulating their presentations, they felt that QF32 would be a useful example of a successful CRM incident to be used in their lecture series. As I was the Senior Check Captain on QF32 I was approached via Qantas management and asked if I would be interested in presenting. This would require me taking two weeks leave from Qantas and travelling to Paris to attend and present to all Air France pilots! No pressure!

My skillset lies in the technical aspects of flying a large wide-bodied aircraft around the world. At the time I had no real experience in presentations or public speaking. Luckily for me, my sons had attended speech and drama classes with a marvellous teacher, Genevieve England, so I approached Genevieve to help me put together a formidable presentation.

Thanks to Genevieve’s talent my presentations went over exceptionally well, to the extent I was later invited to British Airways to repeat the performance. Over the ensuing years this initial presentation has morphed into a lecture on Teamwork, Workload Management, Communication, Decision Making, Situation Awareness and all aspects of Human Factors. I have lectured to not just the Aviation community but Medical, Insurance, Hotel chains, Food and Beverage, Ambulance, and Fire Services to name but a few.