Human Factors (CRM)
Crew Resource Management: how a flight deck uses all the people and information available to it. CRM breakdowns are about communication, workload and authority, not stick-and-rudder skill.
CRM training came out of a run of accidents in the 1970s in which technically competent crews flew serviceable aircraft into the ground while everything they needed to know was present in the cockpit and nobody assembled it.
A CRM finding typically involves a steep authority gradient (a first officer who saw the problem and did not press it), poor task-sharing during a high-workload phase, or a monitoring pilot absorbed in a distraction while the flying pilot lost the plot. The remedies are procedural: standard callouts, defined pilot-flying and pilot-monitoring duties, and an explicit obligation to escalate.
Related terms
A crew action or omission was a causal factor. Modern investigators treat it as a starting point, not a verdict. The useful question is why the action made sense at the time.
The recorder capturing flight-deck audio: crew speech, radio calls, alerts and ambient sound. Its contents are legally protected.
An engineering or maintenance action (a part fitted wrongly, an inspection missed, a repair done off-manual) contributed to the accident.