The crucial thing about habits is the lack of decision-making. Making decisions is draining. Habits free you from using self-control or willpower.
~ Gretchen Rubin
Illusion of airline safety systems
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.
The Tao of Landing?
Who know the Tao Te Ching, written around the 6th century BC by the Chinese sage Lao Tsu, contained such good landing advice?
(Chapter four, Gia-Fu Feng translation)
The Tao is an empty vessel; it is used, but never filled.
Oh, unfathomable source of ten thousand things!
Blunt the sharpness,
Untangle the knot,
Soften the glare,
Merge with dust.
Oh, hidden deep but ever present!
I do not know from whence it comes.
It is the forefather of the gods.
Don’t crawl. Fly.
Allan Lokos on what we control
Allan Lokos is the founder and guiding teacher of the community Meditation Center in New York City, and author of several books on peaceful living. On Christmas day, 2012, Lokos and his wife were in a fiery plane crash in Burma. Many doctors told him he would not survive his injuries. Yet he did. And continued to thrive. That journey is described in his new book Through the Flames.