Before you grab your torch and pitchfork, hear me out.
In many industries, especially aviation, a good safety record is a competitive advantage. In high reliability organizations (HROs) such as airlines, safety is paramount to the organization's success. After all, a single accident, no matter how rare, can have devastating consequences in terms of cost in human life and liability. In fact, the primary, secondary, and tertiary victims are not the ones who made the risky decision, but end up bearing the brunt of its consequences.
Airlines, manufacturers, and their labor representative organizations spend millions of dollars each year researching and developing safety protocols and procedures. This is often reinforced by public sources such as military studies, information published from regulatory investigations, and publicly funded research projects. Since effective safety protocols are high on the list of things that impact an organization's health, they will become a closely guarded industrial secret.
Except it's not.
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As the aviation industry becomes more technologically complex, the risk and impact of safety system failures increases. Over the past century, safety science has evolved from a linear view of blaming the operator to complex socio-technical modeling aimed at identifying both manifest and latent failures within an event. Ta. To reflect this growth and better achieve its goal of having the world's most efficient and safe airspace, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2015 expanded its role to rigorously enforce its compliance philosophy. changed from one that promotes cooperation in safety. sponsor. In managing its goals, the FAA has adopted several safety initiatives, both mandated (such as internal safety management systems) and voluntary, to improve safety culture, best practice sharing, and data collection. program to the aviation industry.
Major commercial airlines, general aviation companies such as private sector aviation departments and tour operators, and industry players in between are quickly recognizing the benefits of in-house safety programs. The idea of aviation safety arose from the need to meet public demand for the services of the civil aviation industry in the aftermath of World War I and World War II. Advances in technology, human factors understanding, and procedures are a direct result of accident investigation and have spurred increased infrastructure and research. While early safety processes focused on the outcome of an accident, this reactive thinking focused on specific proactive factors rather than underlying or fundamental factors (what made the failure worse?). We often arrived at recommendations that addressed specific failures (what specifically went wrong). This caused the failure. Internal safety programs enable organizations to capture safety-related information, standardize risk management processes, and proactively share hazard identification and mitigation resources.
To assist the aviation industry in developing safety programs, the FAA has issued advisory circulars (ACs) that provide guidance on the development, implementation, and management of safety programs. Labor organizations and unions also develop standards for voluntary but often industry-standard safety programs, share best practices and procedures, and provide information exchange to organizations facing similar hazards. We offer a place.
One of the most commonly used safety programs is the FAA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS). The crash of his TWA Flight 514 on December 1, 1974 brought widespread attention to the need to collect safety information collectively and make it available to all parties. TWA Flight 514 crashed into a small mountain 40 miles from Dulles International Airport, killing all on board. A subsequent investigation found, among other causes, that the diagrams and terminology used in publishing the approach were unclear. United Airlines had a similar incident six weeks ago and narrowly avoided the mountain, but its internal safety program identified the mistake and forced the crew to take corrective action. TWA did not have access to that information.
Prior to a formal probable cause assessment by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the FAA announced the need for a National Safety Information Program to collect, analyze, and disseminate information to users of the National Airspace System (NAS). I decided. Identify and mitigate hazards within your NAS. Currently, all users of NAS can utilize her ASRS to voluntarily and anonymously submit safety-related information. It is managed by NASA, a non-regulatory agency, and the information is anonymized and analyzed. NASA's role is to facilitate information gathering, to ensure that the submission of safety information in good faith is non-punitive, and that submitters are not encouraged to hide details. It can be made more complete.
There is actually an Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP), similar to the ASRS, available to employee certificate holders (airlines, manufacturers, air traffic controllers, etc.) who voluntarily participate in the program. The goal of ASAP, which is more limited in scope than ASRS, is to provide eligible company employees with safety-related information directly to incident resolution committees comprised of FAA, company, and labor union representatives to help resolve accidents. The goal is to provide a way to identify warning signs, unclear steps, or inefficient steps. policy. The reporter will be given the same protection as her ASRS and information will be aggregated to identify potential hazards within her NAS.
Starting in 2008, the FAA and industry sponsors developed a twice-yearly convention known as InfoShare where airlines, labor organizations, and industry participants openly share safety-related information and discuss high-risk events. Did. The primary purpose of these events is to share information gathered about the hazards faced and best practices for mitigating the identified hazards.
Information sharing on this scale needed to happen organically.Any amount regulation It could have been forced into existence, but the cooperation fostered by regulators (when you realize blunt force doesn't work…take action) has led to both industry and the FAA being punitive. Instead of being passive, I was able to become more agile and proactive. Perhaps other industries and institutions can learn lessons as well (look at healthcare organizations, with their notorious accident rates and rigorous investigative methods).
Dennis Murphy is a professional airline pilot with a background in aviation safety, accident investigation, and causation. When he's not flying 737s, he enjoys the company of his wife, his dog, cats, and bees.