What do you think about John Anderson’s public statement about air safety not being a question of cost?
I'd say he is half right, and half wrong. Air safety is actually about risk, and what the risk tolerance is of the Government and the Public. What he is actually saying in this quote is that his risk tolerance for an accident is zero.....therefore, as much money that is required to be spent will be spent in achieving this outcome.....ergo, this is not a question of cost. This is why our costs for participating in aviation have, and will continue to, rise. Everytime there is a new risk mitigator
it will be implemented no matter the cost. If we don't, we are conceeding that our risk tolerance is not zero......and we can't be seen to be doing that.....even though that is the reality.
Unfortunaltely, no one has told him that zero risk is impossible.
How it should be done: there should be reasoned discussion amongst all stakeholders to establish the minimum level risk we are all prepared to accept for the operations we participate in (Hint: it won't be the same for all operations/classes of airspace). We all make this determination, knowing full well that we will need to fund this level of risk.
Job done
The problem is that John Anderson started the other way. He declared we will spend to infinity to reach zero. Fact is zero is not actually where we want to be.
Alpha