username

I was on a Skywest UAX flight today. The Captain was female and the First Officer was male. They had the same last name. I asked and it turned out they were married.

I wonder from a Cockpit dynamic / CRM point of view, what are pluses and minuses for this situation?

Also, in the airline world, do they consider the FO working for the Captain? If that is the case, in many companies, you would not be allowed to report to your spouse.

Upon arrival at ORD, we taxied for 15 minutes. We were joking in the back that we were lost but the husband refused to stop and ask for direction

Other than the pre-departure announcement, no annoucements at all (after takeoff or before descend).

Ari

I wonder who wears the pants in the relationship!

Nice that they let them work together though I can see good reasons not to allow it.

Exleftseat

Humm, how to approach this think politically correct? Being married myself to the same person for over 40 years and also having been a pilot myself, while my wonderful Mrs. EX was a flight attendant, thank heaven with different companies, my first reaction to this report would be negative. There is no way to separate the personal situation from the professional duty. I give you an example of just being a passenger in a Supershuttle situation. The couple, long time married, worked so great together, but when the exit question came up, a real discrepancy developed. They painted it over nicely, but we felt the distress and the disagreement. Of course, the husband prevailed. This is in an airport limo. It ain't going to happen on my airline ( if I had one ) and I cannot agree with scheduling like this.
By the way, what's the implication if you know about this situation and refuse to be a pax on this flight?

senseker

What would be the problem?

"No honey, don't land like that" or "I'm taking off THAT way and that's final!"

Exleftseat

In the "airline" world, the captain is always in control and the F/O is second in command. It is decided who flies the aircraft and who does the communication prior to take-off. There could be two captains on the flight deck, but one is designated the left seat and one would be designated the right, the F/O ( copilot ) seat.
Sometimes the F/O is flying and the "left seat" is doing the communication, sometimes it is the opposite. In an emergency, the captain will hopefully take over control and then is in charge. At a "bad" LH landing attempt at EHAM the captain took over from the apparently inexperienced female F/O. There a hundreds of threads on many, many websites for outsiders, like regular passengers, to get an inside to this kind of operations ( pprune.org is one example ). If you are lucky and fly on UA mainline and have a cooperative pilot, who is not adverse to broadcast Ch9, you will hear, who is the captain and who will fly the plane today.
I have never heard of any married couple, or even "friendly but not (yet) married" couple in all my time inside and outside the aviation industry. I, personally, do not agree with this scheduling, although I wish the couple stays together forever being in the airline profession.

RichardKenner

One is reminded of the Japanese crash quite a number of years ago which was one of the worst examples of CRM (Cockpit Resource Management). Yes, the captain is "in command", but a critical role of the first-officer is to be a second person to check for errors. There was a crew in Japan where the captain was male and the first officer female (not married). Because of cultural issues (especially then), men completely disregarded women and the CVR dialog was something like this:

FO: There's a mountain ahead!
CAPT: No, there isn't!
FO: Sir, there's a mountain ahead!
CAPT: Be quiet!
[sound of crash]

I think that if the couple has a relationship where they view themselves as partners, then they would do an exceptional job of working together in the cockpit. But if it was a relationship where one were dominant, it could very easily negatively affect CRM. Because I don't think the airline can (or should!) know which of these is the case, there ought to be a restriction against this.

deadpass

I think if a couple can both become successful like that then the odds of them letting their personal relationship get in the way of the professional one is slim.

IslandBased

My GF is a Divorce Lawyer. I wish your statement had something to do with reality... When a marriage falls apart, anything goes. As her Counselor says:

When a criminal goes to court, you see a bad person at his best, when a marriage fails, you see good people at their worst.

Pharaoh

I agree and am also sure the airline would be extra careful in the first place to ensure cockpit compatibility. In fact, I would probably be happier flying with such a couple than a couple of hot young'uns of the opposite sex up front.

N1120A

An episode of the WN version of "Airline" actually featured a couple who met in the cockpit and got married on the show. They flew together frequently.

Exleftseat

That was a great show. I miss it.

PHLflying

My wife and I would do fine because there are no painted turn lanes in the sky, and her desire that I get in those lanes way way way way way in advance is the cause of 90 percent of our arguments....

davem4

I think my experience was more worrisome than a married couple.

I was taking a private jet (Citation Bravo II) from Brisbane to Coffs Harbour and my flight crew were 2 brothers.

They actually fought during the flight as to who was going to land the plane.

techauthor

The issue isn't marital status, it is compatibility and the ability of FO to accept command from Capt without regard to friendship, seniority, marriage or anything else.

I see it as the airlines' job to test for and assure such compatibility. If the airlines are going to prohibit that, then they also need to monitor for who is having an affair with whom or the opposite; which two pilots are not getting along and so shouldn't fly together (for whatever reason one might give to prohibit married couples in the cockpit.) If some prude is worried about sex while working, I say that a married couple is less a risk than a random pairing where there' s any sexual tension between the two. I would also point out that sexual tension is not just a male-female issue. What airline would want to police same-sex attractions/affairs?

If being married and working a common schedule makes their life easier (and perhaps keeps trained/qualified people from burning out and leaving) then that's great for all of us.

Bottom line: judge on quality of product, and otherwise mind your own business.

RichardKenner

It's the other way around: the concern is the Captain being willing to accept a suggestion/correction from the FO. If the Captain doesn't, you lose most of the reason for having the FO in the first place.