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The “Germanwings” air crash in 2015 in which 150 people were killed highlighted the challenges pilots working in the aviation industry face. Pilots regularly work for extensive periods in inhospitable and high-pressure operational conditions, exposing them to considerable work-related stress. This has raised calls for a more systemic cultural change across the aviation industry, championing a more holistic perspective of pilot health and well-being. The study aims to explore how peer coaching (PC) can promote an inclusive psychosocial safety climate enhancing pilot well-being and can mitigate hazardous attitudes and dysfunctional behaviours.

Adopting an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were conducted with military and civilian peer coach/coachee pilots and key industry stakeholders, totalling 39 participants. The research provided significant insights into the perceived value of PC in promoting both pilot health and mental well-being (MW) and flight safety across the aviation industry.

The study highlights four key PC superordinate themes, namely, coaching skills, significance of well-being, building of peer relationships and importance of confidentiality and autonomy. Such combined themes build reciprocal trust within peer conversations that can inspire engagement and effectively promote personal well-being. The contagious effect of such local interventions can help stimulate systemic cultural change and promote a positive psychosocial safety climate throughout an organisation and, in this case, across the aviation industry. This study provides a PC conceptual framework “Mutuality Equality Goals Autonomy Non-evaluative feedback, Skill Confidentiality Voluntary Supervisory (MEGANS CVS),” highlighting the salient features of PC in promoting MW.

The study highlights the salient features of PC and its role in promoting peer conversations that enable personal transition, openness and acceptance. This study also highlights how PC and well-being can be used to encourage inclusivity and engagement, thereby strengthening institutional resilience.

This study highlights how PC that can assist HRM/HRD professionals to embed a more inclusive and salutogenic approach to MW that can reshape organisational cultures. This study highlights the significance and link of workplace stress to hazardous attitudes and dysfunctional behaviours. It further notes that whilst the MEGANS CVS peer coaching framework has been applied to pilots, it can also be applied across all sectors and levels.

This study highlights the value of PC as an inexpensive means to engage at the grassroots level, which not only improves personal performance, safety and well-being but by building peer relationships can also act as a catalyst for positive and deep organisational cultural change.

This study offers the MEGANS CVS framework that exposes insights into PC practice that can assist HRM/HRD professionals embed a more inclusive and salutogenic approach to health and well-being that can reshape organisational cultures. This study highlights the significance and link of workplace stress to hazardous attitudes and dysfunctional behaviours, and whilst this framework has been applied to pilots, it can also have relevance across all sectors and levels. This study calls for a “salutogenic turn,” employing MW and PC to transform organisational capabilities to be more forward-thinking and solution-focused, promoting an inclusive “just culture” where leaders positively lead their people.

The technical report released by the National Transportation Safety Board, along with the primary flight cockpit voice recorder data and archival interview data, were used as the basis for this case. Other available public data such as news reports were used to round out the synopsis of the case study.

United Express Flight 5925 was a scheduled commuter passenger flight operated by Great Lakes Airlines with a Beechcraft 1900 twin turboprop. It was a regularly scheduled flight from Chicago O'Hare International Airport to Quincy, Illinois, with an intermediate stop in Burlington, Iowa. Drawing from various first-hand accounts (cockpit voice recorder) and secondary evidence (news reports, archival interview data, and online sources) of the tragedy, the case provides a detailed account of the key events that took place leading up to the accident at Quincy regional airport. The case describes how the radio interactions, a jammed door and degradation of situational awareness all contributed to the accident. Through many of the quotes in the text and eyewitness accounts, readers gain an understanding of the impressions and perceptions of the pilots, including how they felt about many of the critical decisions in the last minutes of the flight and the situation at the airport.

When the authors teach this case, the students are required to read it as pre-reading before class. Various readings and materials (see supplemental readings below and Exhibit 3) are made available to students before class, and the instructor can choose to use some of these materials to further explore areas of interest. This case is best explored over a 90-min session but could be expanded to take up one 3-h session. This case can be covered in an undergraduate senior capstone organizational behaviour seminar, any general organizational behaviour class (including introductory in nature), an undergraduate communication theory class or an MBA class that focuses on applied organizational behaviour concepts. It works particularly well in the MBA class, as students with work experience can make the links between the behaviours explored in the case and their everyday workplaces.