This is the real secret of life
airline ops
NTSB on lessons learned from UPS 1354
“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.
When those systems fail, and they do fail
Richard Champion de Crespigny was the Captain of Qantas Flight 32, an A380 that suffered massive systems damage when number two engine exploded and severed many connections. It is the kind of crazy emergency that we don’t train for. It’s the type of crazy emergency that shows airmanship isn’t all loops and rolls. It’s deep systems knowledge. (Quote from an ‘Airways’ magazine interview, May 2015.)
Cannot predict human factors?
“There is nothing we can do, because there is nothing that we failed in … This has to do with human factors, and you cannot predict that.” ~ Marlene Manave, the former boss of LAM Mozambique, regards her carrier’s response to the pilot murder-suicide crash of flight 470. So much for studying psychology then. Quoted in The Economist.
Sleep and air crew fatigue management.
“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.