| The aim of this research was to gain a better understanding of the effect an airline merger had on the cultural aspects of flight-deck management, safety, and crew resource management. The researcher interviewed 12 participants to gain this understanding through the lived experiences on the flight deck during the merger of two major U.S. carriers. For this study, the researcher used transcendental phenomenology as a methodology. Participants were interviewed from both merger partners to determine how cultural differences between merger partners affected flight management. In this study, flight operations managers at the acquiring airline elected to adopt most of the operational concepts used by their organization. This placed the majority of the cultural changes on the crewmembers from the acquired airline. These changes to the acquired organization's cultural management of the flight deck created emotional stress and anxiety for those crewmembers during the merger transition. The common theme from the acquired group of crewmembers was that the safety net normally in place every day was reduced during the merger as those members of the new organization struggled through significant changes to their organizational culture. The significant take away from this research was that individual crewmembers compensated for the reduced safety during the transition to the new organizational culture by increasing attention to their professional culture on the flight deck. |
