Back Shop: Industry Insights

Gandhi once said, and it’s true today, happiness (ditto mental health) is when what you think, and what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

But I say to my aviation colleagues: a safe/secure/healthy aircraft charter operation is when what regulations/good industry practices intuit or point owners/management to think about, and what operator manuals/policies/programs say, and what operators consistently do, are all in harmony.

Employees will buy into an existing or growing corporate safety/security culture for their physical well-being and self-serving continued employment, but they will be less participatory if management safety leadership wobbles, is inconsistent, guilty of hypocrisy or is perceived to be so by its employees.

The "Broken Window Theory" dictates that organizational/societal threatening problems must be quickly and accurately defined, then addressed and visibly fixed and made publicly aware of in short order to prevent human repetition or spreading as in copy-cat crime.

The theory goes, that say if a factory broken window is not quickly fixed then the public (or employees) perceive the owner doesn’t care enough about the matter, and passerbys in misplaced sporting nature, eventually and repeatedly throw stones and break more windows. Now this can apply particularly to aviation safety programs, exhibited by employee sloppy performance/poor attitude, outdated manuals/training, confusing procedures, etc. Employees rightly see all this and more, if allowed to continue, as managements’ acceptance or toleration of substandard conditions or job performance.

China, India and a few other developing countries are experiencing phenomenal economic, industrial and commercial aviation growth. U.S. charter and fractional aircraft operations continue to grow. Major airport building/improvement projects, new entrant airlines and charter operators, both fixed- and rotary-winged, and other aviation industry related infrastructure expansions are all underway.

However, a persistent and repeating aviation safety problem is when small, once well-run companies/organizations expand too quickly and fail to adequately modulate growth to be consistent with improving its organizational human resources, management controls and internal support systems. Often the reason for this failure is that the company management has not been in a rapid growth situation before and mistakenly thinks their past success will follow them in the future. In other words, they are usually the major part of the problem. For many non-aviation companies, the market place weeds them out and they simply go bankrupt and fade away.

However, for airlines, charter operators or maintenance entities, etc. when growth exceeds support capability, operational performance eventually declines and then safety usually follows the same downward trend with the increased risk/exposure of accidents/incidents. Those commercial entities providing the public sector with aviation services are civic and morally duty bound to carry out their services with the highest level of care and safety.

The quickest way to lose client business, lose an earned respected aviation image, and ultimately lose an entire business is to experience a serious accident or two, especially where management is found to have allowed, consciously or subconsciously, its operating standards and safety to have deteriorated.

Remember, aviation regulations are the minimum required, repeat the minimum, for safe operation; good operators will go well beyond them, and so if an infrequent slip is unintentionally made there is an existing cushion to soften the fall from perfect safety.

Yes, Mahatma* Gandhi certainly got it right and we all would benefit in our private, professional and business lives to follow his simple and ever wise three-part harmonious philosophy. Put into modern day street hip-talk, we aviation professionals with a focus on or responsibility for safety, have to (1) Think-the-thinkable, (2) Talk-the-talk, and most importantly (3) Walk-the-walk; otherwise a disharmonious operational culture or climate can develop and fester and result ultimately in adversely affecting aviation safety.

*Mahatma – A great soul, a person possessing high-mindedness, wisdom, selflessness.

Bart J. Crotty is an airworthiness/maintenance/flight operations/safety/security consultant, expert witness, and the maintenance human factors chairman for the International Society of Air Safety Investigators. He resides in Springfield, Virginia.