On 28 December 1978, United Airlines Flight 173 circled Portland, Oregon, for nearly an hour while its captain obsessed over a landing gear indicator light. The first officer and flight engineer voiced concerns about fuel; the captain did not hear them. When the engines finally flamed out from exhaustion, the DC-8 crashed into a suburban wood. Ten people died; the gear was down all along.

The National Transportation Safety Board cited the captain's failure to monitor fuel and the crew's failure to communicate their concern. The accident was not mechanical; it was human. In 1979, NASA convened a landmark workshop, "Resource Management on the Flightdeck," bringing together government, industry, and psychology experts to study how flight crews could avoid such failures. The label coined there—Cockpit Resource Management, later Crew Resource Management—gave a name to a revolution.

United Airlines launched the first comprehensive CRM training program in 1981, drawing on corporate management techniques to teach assertiveness, leadership, and teamwork in the cockpit. The FAA eventually mandated CRM for all air carriers. What began in the wreckage of a DC-8 over Portland taught the world that the captain's chair is not a throne, but the first seat in a team.