Rules for the Air Safety Road

The Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) and the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) held their 53rd annual Corporate Aviation Safety Seminar (CASS) April 29-May 1 in Palm Harbor, Florida. The fact that the event had a record number of attendees belies the fact that aviation safety management has become...

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The Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) and the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) held their 53^rd annual Corporate Aviation Safety Seminar (CASS) April 29-May 1 in Palm Harbor, Florida.

The fact that the event had a record number of attendees belies the fact that aviation safety management has become a critical issue in the wake of questions related to air carrier adherence to airworthiness directives and fatal accidents, including a midair involving a corporate jet and commercial air transport in Brazil.

Bill Voss, president and chief executive of the FSF, opened the event with a discussion of three critical issues facing the aviation industry: historical growth, criminalization and air safety management.

He said "a renewal of the global aviation industry is ongoing, with the industry being replaced with one double its size today." Voss noted that sale of new civil transports will top $2.7 trillion over the next 20 years, with 365,000 new pilots required, including 110,000 in the United States alone, to fly them. In 2007, over 1,100 business jets were delivered. Projections call for 11,000 more over the next decade, a 1:1 ratio for every passenger jet built, requiring more pilots to fly the new Very Light Jets and turboprops coming off the assembly lines and more mechanics to maintain them.

Voss said a shortage of flight instructors looms as they "run off to fly corporate jets" and that air safety regulators are in short supply worldwide "with less than half the nations having sufficient number of regulators for safety oversight."

Stated Voss: "When you don't pay careful attention to safety, we have changes in the accident statistics. You get more controlled flight into terrain, more loss of control accidents. We stand on the edge of a pretty dark place."

EUROCONTROL and the FSF recently announced a new partnership to reinforce aviation safety in Europe and globally. The partnership aims at strengthening cooperation between the two organizations in order to reduce aviation safety risk. Three key issues stand out in the joint work: mitigating the risk posed by the combination of growth in traffic and shortage of air traffic controllers and pilots; the need to create a 'Just Culture' in aviation; and the promotion of SKYbary, an online repository for safety-related information.

The FSF has also partnered with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to address the growing issue of a global shortage of skilled aviation personnel.

Voss said business aviation and regional airlines also have a stake in the future. "We need to make sure everybody has a spot at the table. We have a lot of work to do, including a complete revisiting of pilot certification requirements, which is really not serving us well today."

He does not like the fact that pilots are flying commuter aircraft with only 250 hours in their log books. "When I fly on a regional jet, I want to see pilots with crew coordination training, see all the things that turn them into competent flight crews. There needs to be a major overhaul on how this is done since there is now a global pilot market."

Voss also said criminalization has taken center stage, noting that while in the past prosecutors or attorneys might seek to blame pilots or controllers in the aftermath of an accident, they now tend to look to the responsibility of a company's management and its safety diligence. Some believe that the police now feel that the main scene of the crime is the head office.

Voss said juries "are now looking up the corporate ladder since it is easier to gain convictions at much higher levels of the organizations." The air safety expert said industry managers need to ensure a safety culture if they want to stay out of jail and avoid stiff financial penalties. "Juries are not going after the guy in the left seat. They are using the guy in the left seat to go state's evidence, to turn over the defects in the safety system," Voss told the CASS attendees.

The head of the safety organization discussed the ongoing debate in the United States regarding an alleged "cozy relationship" between air safety regulators and airline industry executives.

The FSF head says self-reporting aviation safety partnership programs have a role. "The commercial aviation system in the United States is the safest in the world," said Voss, "and both the FAA and industry should be justifiably proud of their record. As in any safety management system, there is always room for continuous improvement, but we cannot allow isolated breakdowns, which the FAA and industry are moving swiftly to address, to ruin partnership programs that have demonstrably contributed to aviation's sterling safety record. Nor can we afford to dry up the free flow of information that allows professionals to identify problems before they become safety threats," Voss continued. "We cannot create a wall between the FAA and the airlines that will stop the flow of information and set aviation safety back 20 years."

Added Voss: "It sounds like we are trying to get in bed together, give each other a hug and manage risk without any degree of accountability, create no-blame reporting systems. We've got to get out the message: Safety is about holding operators in the industry accountable for management of risk."