A safety complex

Amidst the conjecture, a good many issues were raised. Some were relevant and some were not. Crew experience, crew training, use of automation, airline culture, cockpit gradient, manipulative skill levels, situational awareness, approach guidance systems and so on. These were all very relevant possible contributing factors that will fall under the microscope of the investigators as they piece together the event from well before the aircraft’s engines started until after the evacuation was complete.

Such an event gives every company cause to sit up and take notice, for complacency is also one of the great threats to safety. Ongoing safety is the result of sound training, management and encouraging a healthy, open culture. It is not good luck and a sound record in days gone by can be shattered in an instant. Safety awareness is an ongoing challenge and those who do it best are always seeking to do it better.

Breeding such a culture can be far more easily said than done. Often there are hurdles in the way of safety and they are not always intentional. Those hurdles can stem from a flightdeck culture where the gradient is so steep that no crewmember can climb the slope to challenge or question the captain’s authority. This may stem from the ‘law of the land’ but unfortunately that is not a healthy situation in the cockpit as the emergence of crew resource management (CRM) has emphasised in recent decades.

Sometimes progress can even be a threat to safety. The growth of new air routes or a company’s prosperity and expansion can see rapid recruitment and promotion that lowers the average experience level at the helm. Training departments can become stretched in the best of times and standards must be managed even when a level of commercial excitement and very positive morale exists.

And then there’s the old chestnut – resources. Safety calls for the assignment of manhours and dollars to its ongoing success. Audits, reviews, training and ground-based courses all take time and money that impact the bottom line. As pressure grows on flight departments to train pilots within shrinking budgets, anything above and beyond the barest of regulatory requirements can unfortunately fall within the accountant’s cross-hairs. Directing resources heavily at safety departments and training after an accident seems to be a case of the horse having bolted, but inherently that is what happens. However, as the old saying goes – “If you think safety is expensive, try having an accident”.

The debate regarding the erosion of basic piloting skills versus automation surfaced after the loss of Air France 447 and has again been raised in the wake of the Asiana accident. It is undoubtedly one of the major challenges facing the industry as technology continues to grow and transforms the role of the pilot. Already it is the focus of safety experts and managers around the world as they seek to find the correct balance that allows man and machine to co-exist.

The loss of an airliner is always bound to make the headlines, but to think that it is the sole definer between good and bad safety is fraught with danger. Anyone who has worked operationally in aviation can recall companies that were an accident waiting to happen – but never did. Conversely, there were operators who fell victim to the alignment of subtle ‘holes in the Swiss cheese’ and ill-fortune befell them despite a fundamentally sound safety culture. Fate can be a very cruel mistress.

There are so many elements in breeding safety within any aviation organisation. It is an almost invisible cloak that covers every aspect of the company from engineering to pilots, cabin crew to management and beyond. It impacts the way individuals approach their task and encourages them to speak up, challenge and question. It is these many diverse threads that ultimately come together in an attempt to mend any holes before they can cause any damage.

It is this anonymous nature of safety at work that can often see it overlooked by so many. And for the average passenger it is virtually impossible to truly grasp the safety culture of any airline. Past records are just that – an indication of a possible sound approach to safety and good fortune. No-one outside, and even many within, an organisation can often appreciate the simmering threats to safety that may exist. While others strive that extra mile to educate, train and propagate a true safety culture, but that won’t generally grab the headlines.

Aviation safety is not something that can be assigned a rating in the public forum like a hotel chain. It is a way of doing business and is part of a company’s most basic fabric. It can be heard in the words of its employees and seen in its day-to-day decisions. A delayed flight may actually reflect a sound safety culture, but negatively affect the highly-publicised on-time performance. Safety and commercial interests are often seen as opposing each other, but in a truly safe organisation they are complementary.

Accidents are the end result of a long chain of events and button-holing tragedies into pilot error or pointing fingers is a wasted exercise with little opportunity to learn and improve. Hull-losses are the headline-grabbers, but what of those significant close-calls that fly beneath the media spotlight. Are they the tremors before the quake that nobody hears? Just as the causes of an accident can be varied, the key to safety lies across a range of actions and behaviours. For the sake of the industry and all that fly, everyone should develop a healthy safety complex.