Aviation Safety Quotes

UFOs are real, physical objects; they remain unexplained; they can be an aviation safety hazard; our government routinely ignores them, disrespecting expert witnesses and issuing false explanations;

(Captain Grubbs: "There he is, look at him! Goddamn, that son of a bitch is coming!")

In a series of experiments, safety officials ran regular people through mock evacuations from planes. The trials weren't nearly as stressful as real evacuations, of course, but it didn't matter. People, especially women, hesitated for a surprisingly long time before jumping onto the slide. That pause slowed the evacuation for everyone. But there was a way to get people to move faster. If a flight attendant stood at the exit and screamed at people to jump, the pause all but disappeared, the researchers found. In fact, if flight attendants did not aggressively direct the evacuation, they might as well have not been there at all. A study by the Cranfield University Aviation Safety Centre found that people moved just as slowly for polite and calm flight attendants as they did when there were no flight attendants present.

I have spent my entire adult life studying safety practices in adventure sports, and have concluded that the primary problem is that we are in fact the generation least prepared to engage high-risk situations. We have grown up in a society that lives far from “the edge”. We watch life as spectators, more than as participants. We then go out and buy the gear that some website says is necessary, and we are surprised when we get hurt. We are a generation of naïve dreamers, who awaken occasionally to dare our fate in the real world.

The perils of aviation in the period are neatly encapsulated in the experience of Harold C. Brinsmead, the head of Australia’s Civil Aviation Department in the first days of commercial aviation. In 1931, Brinsmead was on a flight to London, partly for business and partly to demonstrate the safety and reliability of modern air passenger services, when his plane crashed on takeoff in Indonesia. No one was seriously hurt, but the plane was a write-off. Not wanting to wait for a replacement aircraft to be flown in, Brinsmead boarded a flight with the new Dutch airline, KLM. That flight crashed while taking off in Bangkok. On this occasion, five people were killed and Brinsmead suffered serious injuries from which he never recovered. He died two years later. Meanwhile, the surviving passengers carried on to London in a replacement plane. That plane crashed on the return trip. Daly

Where flight safety & or aerodomes safety is concerned, no country plays around, simply because ICAO has a red flagging system & the EU have a blacklisting system. As such no Country can risk it. But, where aviation security is concerned, all hide under the sacredeness of National security and sovereignty. Were ICAO to begin a red flagging system and the EU a blacklisting one past the ACC3 or RA3 lukewarm approach. Every country will begin being serious about it, and the laziness in CAA's as regards aviation security management will disappear overnight.

practice is about harnessing the benefits of learning from failure while reducing its cost. It is better to fail in practice in preparation for the big stage than on the big stage itself. This is true of organizations, too, that conduct pilot schemes (and in the case of aviation and other safety-critical industries test ideas in simulators) in order to learn, before rolling out new ideas or procedures. The more we can fail in practice, the more we can learn, enabling us to succeed when it really matters. But even if we practice diligently, we will still endure real-world failure from time to time. And it is often in these circumstances, when failure is most threatening to our ego, that we need to learn most of all. Practice is not a substitute for learning from real-world failure; it is complementary to it. They are, in many ways, two sides of the same coin.

And that is why a powerful way to begin this investigation, and to glimpse the inextricable connection between failure and success, is to contrast two of the most important safety-critical industries in the world today: health care and aviation. These organizations have differences in psychology, culture, and institutional change, as we shall see. But the most profound difference is in their divergent approaches to failure.

These words of Sullenberger are worth reflecting upon because they offer the chance to radically reimagine failure. The idea that the successful safety record in aviation has emerged from the rubble of real-world accidents is vivid, paradoxical, and profound. It is also revelatory. For if one looks closely enough it is an insight echoed across almost every branch of human endeavor.

pass across virtually all areas of public policy. As Frederick Winslow Taylor’s principles of scientific management gained traction, progressives began to see expertise and a professional civil service as a way to insulate policy making from corruption. During Roosevelt’s time, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act (both passed in 1906) created federal regulation of food and pharmaceuticals. Throughout the twentieth century, federal regulation would become the dominant model in a variety of areas. Aviation, occupational safety, consumer products, clean water, clean air, hazardous materials—all are areas in which the national government regulates markets to protect the public from the misuse of corporate power and to advance the public interest. Roosevelt’s incorporation law simply applied

Brailsford, Duflo and Vowles see weaknesses with a different set of eyes. Every error, every flaw, every failure, however small, is a marginal gain in disguise. This information is regarded not as a threat but as an opportunity. They are, in a sense, like aviation safety experts, who regard every near-miss event as a precious chance to avert an accident before it happens.

predict where the failures will be. Predictive safety methods will enable us to find those failure points and eliminate them; in effect, predictive safety will allow us to change the future.

On landing, Walters was arrested, although the authorities had some trouble figuring out what to charge him with. At the time, FAA safety inspector told the New York Times, "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed.

Dr. Ron Westrum described information flow as a “prime variable in creating safety, but also it is an indicator of organizational functioning.”19 This was based on studying human factors in system safety in complex and risky industries, including aviation and healthcare. Westrum asserted that “When information does not flow, it imperils the safe and proper functioning of the organization…and second, information flow is a powerful indicator of the organization’s overall functioning.”20

Aviation is different from science but it is underpinned by a similar spirit. After all, an airplane journey represents a kind of hypothesis: namely, that this aircraft, with this design, these pilots, and this system of air traffic control, will reach its destination safely. Each flight represents a kind of test. A crash, in a certain sense, represents a falsification of the hypothesis. That is why accidents have a particular significance in improving system safety, rather as falsification drives science.

Katha Pollitt wrote in The Nation, “Ron Paul has opposed almost every piece of progressive legislation that was passed in the last 200 years! He opposed Federal Deposit Insurance and continues to oppose Roe v. Wade. He would abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, governmental regulations on health and safety (OSHA), and the Federal Aviation Authority.

At the time of the investigation, however, the data can often seem far more ambiguous. The most successful investigators reveal not just a willingness to engage with the incident, but also have the analytical skills and creative insights to extract the key lessons. Indeed, many aviation experts cite the improvement in the quality and sophistication of investigations as one of the most powerful spurs to safety in recent years.8

United Airlines 173 was a traumatic incident, but it was also a great leap forward,” the aviation safety expert Shawn Pruchnicki says. “It is still regarded as a watershed, the moment when we grasped the fact that ‘human errors’ often emerge from poorly designed systems. It changed the way the industry thinks.” Ten people died on United Airlines 173, but the learning opportunity saved many thousands more.

ahead of ICAO audit By Tarun Shukla | 527 words New Delhi: India's civil aviation regulator has decided to restructure its safety board and hire airline safety professionals ahead of an audit by the UN's aviation watchdog ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization). The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) announced its intent, and advertised the positions on its website. ICAO told the Indian regulator recently that it would come down to India to conduct an audit, its third in just over a decade, Mint reported on 12 February. Previous ICAO audits had highlighted the paucity of safety inspectors in DGCA. After its 2006 and 2012 audits, ICAO had placed the country in its list of 13 worst-performing nations. US regulator Federal Aviation Authority followed ICAO's 2012 audit with its own and downgraded India, effectively barring new flights to the US by Indian airlines. FAA is expected to visit India in the summer to review its downgrade. The result of the ICAO and FAA audits will have a bearing on the ability of existing Indian airlines to operate more flights to the US and some international destinations and on new airlines' ability to start flights to these destinations. The regulator plans to hire three directors of safety on short-term contracts to be part of the accident investigation board, according to the information on DGCA's website. This is first time the DGCA is hiring external staff for this board, which is critical to ascertain the reasoning for any crashes, misses or other safety related events in the country. These officers, the DGCA said on its website, must have at least 12 years of experience in aviation, specifically on the technical aspects, and have a degree in aeronautical engineering. DGCA has been asked by international regulators to hire at least 75 flight inspectors. It has only 51. India's private airlines offer better pay and perks to inspectors compared with DGCA. The aviation ministry told DGCA in January to speed up the recruitment and do whatever was necessary to get more inspectors on board, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. DGCA has also announced it will hire flight operations inspectors as consultants on a short-term basis for a period of one year with a fixed remuneration of `1.25 lakh per month. "There will be a review after six months and subsequent continuation will be decided on the basis of outcome of the review," DGCA said in its advertisement. The remuneration of `1.25 lakh is higher than the salary of many existing DGCA officers. In its 2006 audit, ICAO said it found that "a number of final reports of accident and serious incident investigations carried out by the DGCA were not sent to the (member) states concerned or to ICAO when it was applicable". DGCA had also "not established a voluntary incident reporting system to facilitate the collection of safety information that may not otherwise be captured by the state's mandatory incident reporting system". In response, DGCA "submitted a corrective action plan which was never implemented", said Mohan Ranganthan, an aviation safety analyst and former member of government appointed safety council, said of DGCA. He added that the regulator will be caught out this time. Restructuring DGCA is the key to better air safety, said former director general of civil aviation M.R. Sivaraman. Hotel industry growth is expected to strengthen to 9-11% in 2015-16: Icra By P.R. Sanjai | 304 words Mumbai: Rating agency Icra Ltd on Monday said Indian hotel industry revenue growth is expected to strengthen to 9-11% in 2015-16, driven by a modest increase in occupancy and small increase in rates. "Industry wide revenues are expected to grow by 5-8% in 2014-15. Over the next 12 months, Icra expects RevPAR (revenue per available room) to improve by 7-8% driven by up to 5% pickup in occupancies and 2-3% growth in average room rates (ARR)," Icra said. Further, margins are expected to remain largely flat for 2014-15 while

This is at the heart of the professional pilot’s eternal conflict,” writes Wilkinson in a comment to the November Oscar case. “Into one ear the airlines lecture, “Never break regulations. Never take a chance. Never ignore written procedures. Never compromise safety.” Yet in the other they whisper, “Don’t cost us time. Don’t waste our money. Get your passengers to their destination—don’t find reasons why you can’t.

Valujet flight 592 crashed after takeoff from Miami airport because oxygen generators in its cargo hold caught fire. The generators had been loaded onto the airplane by employees of a maintenance contractor, who were subsequently prosecuted. The editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology “strongly believed the failure of SabreTech employees to put caps on oxygen generators constituted willful negligence that led to the killing of 110 passengers and crew. Prosecutors were right to bring charges. There has to be some fear that not doing one’s job correctly could lead to prosecution.”13 But holding individuals accountable by prosecuting them misses the point. It shortcuts the need to learn fundamental lessons, if it acknowledges that fundamental lessons are there to be learned in the first place. In the SabreTech case, maintenance employees inhabited a world of boss-men and sudden firings, and that did not supply safety caps for expired oxygen generators. The airline may have been as inexperienced and under as much financial pressure as people in the maintenance organization supporting it. It was also a world of language difficulties—not only because many were Spanish speakers in an environment of English engineering language: “Here is what really happened. Nearly 600 people logged work time against the three Valujet airplanes in SabreTech’s Miami hangar; of them 72 workers logged 910 hours across several weeks against the job of replacing the ‘expired’ oxygen generators—those at the end of their approved lives. According to the supplied Valujet work card 0069, the second step of the seven-step process was: ‘If the generator has not been expended install shipping cap on the firing pin.’ This required a gang of hard-pressed mechanics to draw a distinction between canisters that were ‘expired’, meaning the ones they were removing, and canisters that were not ‘expended’, meaning the same ones, loaded and ready to fire, on which they were now expected to put nonexistent caps. Also involved were canisters which were expired and expended, and others which were not expired but were expended. And then, of course, there was the simpler thing—a set of new replacement canisters, which were both unexpended and unexpired.”14 These were conditions that existed long before the Valujet accident, and that exist in many places today. Fear of prosecution stifles the flow of information about such conditions. And information is the prime asset that makes a safety culture work. A flow of information earlier could in fact have told the bad news. It could have revealed these features of people’s tasks and tools; these longstanding vulnerabilities that form the stuff that accidents are made of. It would have shown how ‘human error’ is inextricably connected to how the work is done, with what resources, and under what circumstances and pressures.

Air New Zealand Flight 901

for thirty years this country’s had the best aviation safety record in the world. But the thing is, we paid for it. We paid to have new, safe planes and we paid for the oversight to make sure they were well maintained. But those days are over. Now, everybody believes in something for nothing.

En total y según datos de Aviation Safety Network, sitio que hace seguimiento a tragedias y accidente aéreos, en la historia se han presentado cerca de 88 siniestros de esta clase desde 1948 y poco o nada se supo del desenlace de las aeronaves y sus tripulantes.

The answers are perhaps as varied as the questions one asks, but a common theme that comes through in discussions with caregivers on the front lines and those who think a great deal about patient safety, is our failure to change our culture. What we have not done, they say, is create a “culture of safety,” as has been done so impressively in other industries, such as commercial aviation, nuclear power and chemical manufacturing. These “high-reliability organizations” are intrinsically hazardous enterprises that have succeeded in becoming (amazingly!) safe. Worse, the culture of health care is not only unsafe, it is incredibly dysfunctional. Though the culture of each health care organization is unique, they all suffer many of the same disabilities that have, so far, effectively stymied progress: An authoritarian structure that devalues many workers, lack of a sense of personal accountability, autonomous functioning and major barriers to effective communication. What is a culture of safety? Pretty much the opposite! Books have been written on the subject, and every expert has his or her own specific definition. But an underlying theme, a common denominator, is teamwork, founded on an open, supportive, mutually reinforcing, dedicated relationship among all participants. Much more is required, of course: Sensitivity to hazard, sense of personal responsibility, attitudes of awareness and risk, sense of personal responsibility and more. But those attitudes, that type of teamwork and those types of relationships are rarely found in health care organizations.