Improving flight safety in the future
How do people perceive their influence on flight safety?
From the Lynham threads, there is obviously considerable concern about the engineering processes going on, but how does this fit with ‘breaking the chain? While I entirely sympathise with these concerns, when there is now more talk about ‘risk acceptance’ than ‘breaking then chain’, where are we? -
The accident rate since say the 50’s has dropped markedly – eg more planes were being lost in a year then than are now in the whole inventory and despite the Lynham problems, aircraft aren’t falling out of the sky (so I believe that, as ever, people there are working harder and harder to maintain standards to the detriment of their quality of life, with little recognition). Even compared to the start of 1996, when we lost a handlful of jets in short order, things don’t seem that bad.
In the future, safety targets are going to be getting tighter for the platform safety management. As technology reaches a limit of improvement, the only avenue left for a ‘return’ is in operating more safely (ie approx 4x as many accidents caused by some form of human error vs technical failure during flight). But how are we going to implement the required improvement, and then measure it so that the required levels can be demonstrated?
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