A Crash's Improbable Impact

But some experts believe it took the spectacular crash of Air Florida in the Potomac to drill the lessons home and spur widespread use of what was then a revolutionary training regime, later to be known as Crew Resource Management.

Soon, airlines were teaching the Air Florida crash as a textbook example of what can go wrong when pilots do not communicate and listen properly. Students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, many of whom are destined to work for airlines, study the crash. Even budding aircraft engineers at the University of Iowa review the accident so they can think of better ways to design systems to avert communications breakdowns.

At Embry-Riddle, in Daytona Beach, Fla., professors use the accident to highlight a litany of human errors made that day. They even evaluate how the crew went through the pre-flight checklist.

"Anti-ice," Pettit said, referring to a device that prevents icing of critical gauges in the engine.

"Off," Wheaton replied, almost as if he were sitting on a tarmac in Florida and not watching the snow through the windshield.

"The co-pilot was reading the checklist, and he reads the anti-ice item. But then he kept going," said Thomas Kirton, an Embry-Riddle professor, adding that the fateful moment serves to bring home to students the need to carefully consider all actions in the cockpit, no matter who is in charge.

Kirton also has students dissect the last words of the pilots: Pettit is trying to explain that something is wrong. Many experts believe that Pettit should have been more assertive and that Wheaton should have rejected the takeoff so they could determine what was wrong.

Kirton uses the comments to reinforce in his students that they need to forcefully tell captains that something is amiss in a way that cannot be ignored.

"You say: 'Captain Smith, I have a concern. . . . Do you agree with me?' " Kirton said. "If you are in the co-pilot's role, you have to be assertive without being offensive."

A similar ethos has moved into the hospital operating room. At the Nebraska Medical Center, surgical teams have begun to use checklists before each operation to ensure that they have the right patient, are conducting the right procedure and have given patients the appropriate medication. The last checklist item raised by the surgeon is meant to embolden team members to raise concerns, and it is the same one many airline pilots reiterate to their crews: "If anybody sees any red flags, something they are uncomfortable with, bring it to my attention."

Safety experts said evolution in the cockpit's culture, which now also includes listening more attentively to advice from flight attendants, has made aviation far safer. Still, experts say, the industry needs to keep pushing pilots to communicate effectively. The most recent major U.S. crash occurred in August after a regional jet's pilots tried to take off from the wrong runway. Next week the NTSB is scheduled to make public the reports on the crash. The board's investigation is expected to focus intensely on what went wrong in the cockpit that would have led the pilots to attempt taking off from a runway that was too short and not properly lighted.

In other instances, pilots acting and communicating quickly have averted disaster.

In June 2005, a US Airways Boeing 737 was hurtling down a runway at Logan International Airport in Boston when the co-pilot looked out the windshield and saw a wide-body jetliner heading on a collision course. Both jets had been cleared to take off at the same time on intersecting runways.

The co-pilot of the US Airways jet, James Dannahower, pushed down the yoke to prevent the pilot from taking off and told him to keep the plane on the ground. The Aer Lingus jet took off and flew safely overhead.

"He saw it out of his peripheral vision, and I trusted him," the pilot, Hank Jones, said.

Jones, who said the cockpit was too "autocratic" when he started flying in the 1970s, begins each trip with a briefing that involves the first officer and flight attendants. He tells them to alert him to anything that concerns them. As he was descending into Mobile, Ala., recently, the co-pilot did some quick math and told him that the tailwinds were too strong for his aircraft to land safely. The crew then diverted to another airport. "Little things can prevent big things," he said.

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.