The approach briefing is done. Weather is clear. The runway is ahead. And then, at roughly 500 feet above touchdown, the captain's hands go to work on the yoke, firm, repetitive inputs, correcting for nothing in particular.
This is the part of aviation that doesn't show up in incident reports.
Pilots, both captains and first officers, develop habits over thousands of hours. Most are benign. Some, though, quietly complicate the job for whoever is sitting in the other seat.
Take the speed call. During a gusty approach, airspeed fluctuates. That's normal. Standard procedure is to add a gust correction to the reference speed and fly it. What's less standard is calling out "speed" every time the needle twitches, a running commentary that signals alarm where no alarm is warranted. Over time, the other pilot begins filtering it out entirely, which is its own problem.
Then there's the FMS disagreement. One crew recently described a captain rejecting a flight management system entry mid-approach, not because it was wrong, but because the data was formatted in a way he didn't prefer. The first officer had placed a waypoint marker behind an already-passed fix during a visual approach on a base leg, well inside the fix. Perfectly reasonable. The captain wanted it done differently. The discussion happened at a moment that didn't have much room for discussion.
Neither of these examples caused an accident. That's almost the point. They exist in the space below the threshold of official concern, too small to report, too consistent to ignore.
Crew Resource Management training exists precisely because cockpit dynamics affect outcomes. When one pilot's habits erode the other's confidence, or compress the time available for clear decisions, the margin shrinks. Quietly.
Every pilot has a story from the other seat. What does yours sound like?