Airline Safety Data Activist
Thread Starter
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Bielefeld, Germany
Posts: 955
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Airline Safety Data Activist
The New York Times today has an article about Bonnie Rind, who lost her brother in the One-Two-Go accident in Phuket. Ms. Rind has been active in trying to get data about airline safety records into the public domain, where prospective passengers can refer to it, as well as trying to encourage more active oversight by regulators and concerned NGOs.
I generally support efforts to make safety, and safety records, more publically transparent, not least because of the difference, researched over decades by people such as Arnold Barnett of MIT, between general accident rates of airlines that operate in areas of the world which one may deem more safety-transparent, and those which operate elsewhere. The difference in rates is one or two orders of magnitude. Some of the practices uncovered through the work of Ms. Rind show in no small measure why this may be.
The acticle on Ms. Rind and her efforts is at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/bu.../24safety.html. It may be that one has to be registered with the NYT WWW site to view it. (The NYT site does allow a few copies to be e-mailed, so if I know an e-mail address I can forward a copy - but that does require that one send me the e-mail address - I am e-mail-able through PPRuNe).
Threads on PPRuNe concerned with the accident are
FAA knew Thailand deficient july 07 but never informed traveling public , MD80 plane crash Phuket Sep 07 , Phuket air safety issues , and One-Two-Go grounded . There may be others.
I note from the NYT article that Ms. Rind runs a WWW site investigateudom.com , whose name is homophonic with a very active PPRuNe contributor to the threads above. If you are here, well done, Ms. Rind!
PBL
I generally support efforts to make safety, and safety records, more publically transparent, not least because of the difference, researched over decades by people such as Arnold Barnett of MIT, between general accident rates of airlines that operate in areas of the world which one may deem more safety-transparent, and those which operate elsewhere. The difference in rates is one or two orders of magnitude. Some of the practices uncovered through the work of Ms. Rind show in no small measure why this may be.
The acticle on Ms. Rind and her efforts is at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/bu.../24safety.html. It may be that one has to be registered with the NYT WWW site to view it. (The NYT site does allow a few copies to be e-mailed, so if I know an e-mail address I can forward a copy - but that does require that one send me the e-mail address - I am e-mail-able through PPRuNe).
Threads on PPRuNe concerned with the accident are
FAA knew Thailand deficient july 07 but never informed traveling public , MD80 plane crash Phuket Sep 07 , Phuket air safety issues , and One-Two-Go grounded . There may be others.
I note from the NYT article that Ms. Rind runs a WWW site investigateudom.com , whose name is homophonic with a very active PPRuNe contributor to the threads above. If you are here, well done, Ms. Rind!
PBL
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: London
Posts: 8
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I think it must be one and the same lady who is the subject of the NYT article and who posts here under the moniker 'investigateudom'. I salute Ms. Rind's persistence in the face of institutional corruption and incompetence and her courage in pursuing the truth of her brother's tragic death.
Aviation could use many more such people as Ms. Rind. In the course of trying to complete my degree I have encountered the most astonishing difficulty in obtaining reliable, consistent accident data, or even copies of investigation reports. These documents ought to be public records, and the fact that there is not a systematised publically accessible archive where they may be freely consulted is a shaming indictment of ICAO's lofty and oft-stated aims of agitating for the liberalisation (if you will) of safety related data in aviation.
Aviation could use many more such people as Ms. Rind. In the course of trying to complete my degree I have encountered the most astonishing difficulty in obtaining reliable, consistent accident data, or even copies of investigation reports. These documents ought to be public records, and the fact that there is not a systematised publically accessible archive where they may be freely consulted is a shaming indictment of ICAO's lofty and oft-stated aims of agitating for the liberalisation (if you will) of safety related data in aviation.
Thread Starter
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Bielefeld, Germany
Posts: 955
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Originally Posted by choppingmotion
In the course of trying to complete my degree I have encountered the most astonishing difficulty in obtaining reliable, consistent accident data, or even copies of investigation reports.
Let me pass on some pointers towards a few data sources, and report compendiums.
Aviation Safety Network, run by Hanno Ranter and now part of the Flight Safety Foundation, is a very useful source of accident data. He also does a very good job of linking to those reports which are public.
My colleague Robert Dorsett spent considerable effort digitising a mass of accident reports over the years, and distributed them on CD. I believe they are now free. You can check out Aircraft Accident Reports on DVD-ROM . Note to mods: this is not a commercial advertisement. Robert is quite well known in the accident-discussion community and the founder of a well-known avionics&safety mailing list, which is a couple of decades old. His collection is the result of an admirable pro bono sensibility, and the result of years of work.
You can also check out our by now less than comprehensive collection at AG RVS - Computer-Related Incidents with Commercial Aircraft . It is getting hard to keep up with all digital-automation-related accidents, and we have our day jobs to do. But maybe we'll get a private grant soon, to have someone bring it up to date. Trouble is, I write most commentary myself and I am more than loaded down with writing tasks at the moment.
I also find Flight International's annual Safety Review invaluable. It appears in print sometime in January each year, and is for the last couple of years also on their WWW site, http://www.flightglobal.com/ , somewhere under "Safety".
For U.S. NTSB reports, the Embry-Riddle Hunt Library Collection contains many from before the electronic-document era which they digitised.
Originally Posted by choppingmotion
These documents ought to be public records
Originally Posted by choppingmotion
the fact that there is not a systematised publically accessible archive where they may be freely consulted is a shaming indictment of ICAO's lofty and oft-stated aims of agitating for the liberalisation (if you will) of safety related data in aviation.
Just for comparison, the only intellectual enterprise of which I know which successfully maintains a repository of major documents is physics. They have one, for each major area (for example, particle physics is at SLAC). They also invented the WWW, although Sir Tim is now on the Southampton computer science faculty, I believe.
When one understands the political forces at work in the aftermath of aviation accidents (and I mean "political" in the broadest sense of interested human activity), then it is easy to see why things are not necessarily transparent. There are two main factors at play, as I see it. One is simply the scale of human organisation needed to organise and communicate. For example, here is a comment from the Washington Post, at NTSB Cites Pilot Error in 2001 N.Y. Crash (washingtonpost.com) , on the difficulties with exchange of information:
Originally Posted by Washington Post, 26 October 2004
The board voted to discuss developing more formal standards to have the FAA receive reports of overseas safety incidents that might help prevent similar incidents in the United States.
The issue arose after investigators said they were "disappointed" that Airbus and American were less than forthcoming in providing information about the rudder performance of another A300-600 involved in a non-fatal accident four years before Flight 587 crashed.
American alleged that Airbus withheld information about its rudder system in the 1997 incident, in which the plane stalled and its rudder was damaged; pilots regained control of that plane. The safety board ruled that incident was unrelated to the rudder-design issues raised by Flight 587.
But the board said it will address urging the FAA to develop a formal program to share information with other nations' safety agencies. "Unless everyone is forthcoming, it does hinder, and many times prevents us from doing the right thing at a much earlier stage," Rosenker said.
The issue arose after investigators said they were "disappointed" that Airbus and American were less than forthcoming in providing information about the rudder performance of another A300-600 involved in a non-fatal accident four years before Flight 587 crashed.
American alleged that Airbus withheld information about its rudder system in the 1997 incident, in which the plane stalled and its rudder was damaged; pilots regained control of that plane. The safety board ruled that incident was unrelated to the rudder-design issues raised by Flight 587.
But the board said it will address urging the FAA to develop a formal program to share information with other nations' safety agencies. "Unless everyone is forthcoming, it does hinder, and many times prevents us from doing the right thing at a much earlier stage," Rosenker said.
Glad you saw my note, InvestigateUdom. You might like to contact me by e-mail.
PBL
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: London
Posts: 8
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
PBL,
Thank you very much for taking the time to write such a lengthy, detailed and helpful reply. I was previously aware of most of those sites (and have mined them) apart from your own, very interesting site. Nor had I found Mr. Dorsett's CD-Rom which I will now order.
If you are aware of any papers, reports, theses, articles, journals, books - anything at all - which examin the safety impacts of aircraft operating leasing, I would be most grateful if you could steer me in the right direction. I am prinicpally interested in dry leasing - wet leasing I don't think of as leasing as it does not generally entail the separation of ownership from operation of the asset (at least not in a full ACMI context).
Thank you again for your considered response to my hastily dashed off note - you were of course right that I was decrying the failure of ICAO to deliver on its stated aims, and not the aims themselves.
Incidentally - where can I find a good, moderately detailed book on WBA? Fascinating stuff you do.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write such a lengthy, detailed and helpful reply. I was previously aware of most of those sites (and have mined them) apart from your own, very interesting site. Nor had I found Mr. Dorsett's CD-Rom which I will now order.
If you are aware of any papers, reports, theses, articles, journals, books - anything at all - which examin the safety impacts of aircraft operating leasing, I would be most grateful if you could steer me in the right direction. I am prinicpally interested in dry leasing - wet leasing I don't think of as leasing as it does not generally entail the separation of ownership from operation of the asset (at least not in a full ACMI context).
Thank you again for your considered response to my hastily dashed off note - you were of course right that I was decrying the failure of ICAO to deliver on its stated aims, and not the aims themselves.
Incidentally - where can I find a good, moderately detailed book on WBA? Fascinating stuff you do.
Thread Starter
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Bielefeld, Germany
Posts: 955
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
choppingmotion,
I'm glad you're interested in WBA. The home pages need updating, since quite a lot has happened recently. The reference to the book section there, though, is still as up-to-date as we are. There is what I now consider to be a better intro, devised after lengthy experience with our industry tutorials and uni courses, based on the first item in the tutorial casebook (which is not yet publically available). This blog post contains links to some of this material.
PBL
I'm glad you're interested in WBA. The home pages need updating, since quite a lot has happened recently. The reference to the book section there, though, is still as up-to-date as we are. There is what I now consider to be a better intro, devised after lengthy experience with our industry tutorials and uni courses, based on the first item in the tutorial casebook (which is not yet publically available). This blog post contains links to some of this material.
PBL