This is a link to an excellent article, Illusions of Safety, published yesterday by the Royal Aeronautical Society. It’s written by Dr Rob Hunter, Head of Flight Safety, British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA). While it is most directly aimed at the safety professionals that regulate and manage airline safety departments, it has interesting reverberations into any personal risk management discussion. Is safety number one? The whole piece is well worth reading, if only to learn about the origin of the phrase ‘you’ve got to draw the line somewhere‘.
Some powerful lines include:
Some pilots say that they are fearful of reporting fatigue because they will become embroiled in company investigations that have a quasi-disciplinary tone. It is less fatiguing to put up with fatigue than to report it.
If spending on safety would put an airline out of business, it is generally better to save the money today, so that tomorrow you can think about being safe.
The principal risk for a board is not that they are killed in one of their aircraft, but whether they are blamed for someone else being killed in their aircraft. A blame management system may not have safety as its primary goal because its primary goal is the prevention of blame.
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