Charlie Victor Romeo

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Charlie Victor Romeo
Date of premiere	Fall 1999
Subject	Crew Resource Management
Setting	Airplane cockpits
Official site
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Charlie Victor Romeo is a 1999 play whose script consists of almost-verbatim transcripts from six real-life air disasters. "Charlie Victor Romeo," or CVR, derived from the NATO phonetic alphabet, is aviation lingo for cockpit voice recorder. The play is a case study in crew resource management;^[1] a PBS special described several parallels between the behavior seen in these disasters and in emergency room situations.^[2]

The play begins with a flight attendant demonstrating the safety equipment and reminding the audience to fasten their seat belts and turn off cell phones. Prior to each scene, a display screen shows the name of the flight and reason for the disaster (e.g. "Icing" or "Multiple bird strikes"). Sound effects such as hydraulics are included. At the end of each flight, the screen shows the number of casualties. A few of the transcripts were compressed due to time limitations. At the end of the play, the cast and creators answer questions from the audience.

Contents 1 History 2 Disasters 3 References 4 External links

[edit] History

The play was created by Bob Berger, Patrick Daniels and Irving Gregory of Collective Unconscious.^[3] It was taped and used by the Pentagon for pilot training.^[4] US Air Force Major General Walter E. Buchanan III awarded the group a letter of gratitude.^[5] After February 2002 performances in Perth, Australia,^[6] the play performed in dozens of venues across the United States, including Washington, DC's Studio Theatre.^[7] In 2004 Time listed Charlie Victor Romeo on their Best Plays of the Year list. The play has been performed in the Japanese language by the Rinkogun Theater Company under the direction of Yoji Sakate.^[8]

[edit] Disasters

The disasters are:

• American Airlines Flight 1572 (12 November 1995) – The crew incorrectly set the altimeter, so they thought they were flying about 70 feet higher than they were. This led to them crashing into the treetops as they tried to perform a night landing. The engines ingested the trees and failed, so the pilots lowered the flaps 40 degrees to create a "balloon" effect, which enabled them to make it to the runway and land with no casualties. As of Flight 1572, American Airlines was the only airline that required all passengers to take off their shoes before evacuating the plane, and a lot of passengers tripped over the mounds of shoes as they were leaving.
• American Eagle Flight 4184 (31 October 1994) – The crew joked around in the final minutes of the flight, unaware that a layer of ice was building up on the wings which caused the plane to roll. The crew were unable to regain control of the aircraft and the crash killed all on board. See Atmospheric icing.
• Aeroperú Airlines Flight 603 (2 October 1996) – The maintenance crew had taped over the static ports before washing the plane, and then forgot to remove the tape. This resulted in the flight instruments (such as altimeter, airspeed, etc.) failing while the plane was flying through dense fog at 1 AM over the ocean. They had no sense of where they were going or how high they were. The co-pilot began reading through the manual, trying to figure out how to solve the problem. Meanwhile, all sorts of warnings were going off, both because the plane thought that the instrument readings were consistent with various emergencies and because the crew's actions, based on false data, were creating problems. The pilot communicated with the air traffic controller, who kept telling them that they were at 9,700 feet. Actually, they were flying dangerously low, as indicated by the repeated "Too low. Terrain!" warning. The pilot decided to descend, and ended up crashing into the ocean. Air traffic control had been relaying the faulty altitude information transmitted by the plane's transponder.
• United States Air Force Yukla 27 (22 September 1995) – Another plane disturbed a flock of several hundred Canadian geese on the runway, which then took off in unison. However, the tower failed to inform the crew before they took off and flew into the flock. Both engines on the left wing ingested birds and failed catastrophically. In accordance with their training, the crew started dumping fuel in order to lighten the craft. They began a left-hand turn and attempted to go around. The aircraft struck a low-hill on the north side of the airfield and exploded. There were no survivors.
• Japan Air Lines Flight 123 (12 August 1985) – A bulkhead ruptured, causing the loss of the vertical fin, so that the crew had no way to control the plane except by adjusting engine throttles. They flew the plane expertly with what controls they had and kept it aloft for about a half hour, but the plane finally crashed into a mountain, killing 520 of the 524 on board (the deadliest single-aircraft disaster in history). Investigators later attributed the bulkhead rupture to damage from a hard landing six years earlier. Boeing had repaired the damage improperly.^[9]
• United Airlines Flight 232 (19 July 1989) – An engine fan disc shattered, severing hydraulic lines and forcing the shutdown of the engine, in effect taking out all three of the triply-redundant hydraulic systems. As with Flight 123, they had to control the aircraft using left and right engine throttles only (as they had no control over elevators, rudders, etc.) The crew handed over the controls to a DC-10 flight instructor who was on board the flight and they managed to land at Sioux Gateway Airport. The wings tipped at the last moment leading to a crash killing 110 of its 285 passengers and one of the 11 crew members.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Charlie Victor Romeo, official web site.
• Peep – a clip of the reenactment of American Airlines Flight 1572 is available here.