“We are responsible for the incident and its consequences.” ~ Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman on the fatal Philadelphia derailment. Whatever the engineer’s actions in speeding into the curve, it’s refreshingto see a CEO actually take responsibility for a crash. System Safety and Just Culture moving beyond the safety dept? (Guardian newspaper story 2 June 2015.)
“I ask that we pilots recommit to standardization. In 2015, one of the NTSB’s Most Wanted List priorities is to Strengthen Procedural Compliance. This means: follow your SOPs. If you think one of your procedures is inappropriate or unwise, ask your company to consider changing it, but until they do, follow it and potentially avoid a catastrophic incident.” ~ Roger Cox, Senior Aviation Safety Investigator, NTSB, writing on the lessons of the UPS 1354 crash. Blog post on 1 June 2015.
“As long as human beings are pilots . . . fatigue will be a critical safety issue that demands our attention.” Sleep and Air Crew Fatigue Management, excellent serious article in Business & commercial Aviation magazine. Airmanship demands alertness. Quotes Sully Sullenberger, the NTSB’s Mark Rosekind, and many more.
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.
Matt Hall is a former fighter combat instructor and international unlimited aerobatic competitor who now competes in the Red Bull air races. His latest airmanship blog post takes a look at the recent Harrison Ford and SpaceShipTwo crashes. It’s worth reading. Don’t judge an incident or accident based on the outcome. We always need to look deeper…the preparation, the planning, the routine and the overall situational awareness of the pilot at the time of the event. ~ Matt Hall
