CRM training encompasses a wide range of knowledge, skills, and attitudes including communications, situational awareness, problem solving, decision making, and teamwork; together with all the attendant sub-disciplines which each of these areas entails. CRM can be defined as a system that uses resources to promote safety within the workplace. CRM is concerned with the cognitive and interpersonal skills needed to manage resources within an organized system rather than with the technical knowledge and skills required to operate equipment. In this context, cognitive skills are defined as the mental processes used for gaining and maintaining situational awareness, for solving problems and for making decisions. Interpersonal skills are regarded as communications and a range of behavioral activities associated with teamwork. In many operational systems, skill areas often overlap, and are not confined to multi-crew craft or equipment, and relate to single operator equipment or craft. Aviation organizations including major airlines and military aviation have introduced CRM training for crews. CRM training is now a mandated requirement for commercial pilots working under most regulatory bodies, including the FAA (US) and EASA (Europe). The NOTECHS system is used to evaluate non-technical skills. Following the lead of the commercial airline industry, the US Department of Defense began training its air crews in CRM in the mid 1980s. The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy require all air crew members to receive annual CRM training to reduce human-error-caused mishaps. The U.S. Army has its own version of CRM called Aircrew Coordination Training Enhanced (ACT-E). Case studies United Airlines Flight 173 When the crew of United Airlines Flight 173 was making an approach to Portland International Airport on the evening of Dec 28, 1978, they experienced a landing gear abnormality. The captain decided to enter a holding pattern so they could troubleshoot the problem. The captain focused on the landing gear problem for an hour, ignoring repeated hints from the first officer and the flight engineer about their dwindling fuel supply, and only realized the situation when the engines began flaming out. The aircraft crash-landed in a suburb of Portland, Oregon, over short of the runway. Of the 189 people aboard, two crew members and eight passengers died. The NTSB Air Safety Investigator Alan Diehl wrote in his report: Diehl was assigned to investigate this accident and realized it was similar to several other major airline accidents including the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 and