From the accident report, the tug that took the bottom out of one of our aircraft at LHR last week was unfit to be outside of a workshop. It had already suffered a previous total loss of power and hydraulics without managing to run into anything but was still in service. The poor chap who was driving it could easily have been seriously injured. The aircraft will be out of service for around two months and repairs will cost more than one million eight hundred thousand pounds. A nice case of "Ramp Rash" that is!
The time pressure that is put upon all of those who work in aviation is severe, but merely doing your job is no longer sufficient and an on-time departure isn't good enough. Regular meetings are held in most airlines where responsibility for delays of as little as fifteen minutes on an eight or more hour scheduled service are allocated. Those managers whose section is responsible for a delay make written explanations that go direct to the managing director. Under such conditions it is hardly surprising that there are so many "accidents" The wonder is that there aren't more. What's the use of all this "Human Factors" training that is now included in AME licences? Its all aimed at the wrong people - surely its the company directors of the various companies that must be held accountable. After all, I'm sure it wasn't the driver or even the shift manager that made the decision to keep that tug in service.
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Through difficulties to the cinema