Re: Three Dead....Another Night Bad Weather Flight Over Dark Terrain
While surfing the net tonight....ran across an article put out by AAMS after their Safety Syposium in April of 2000. They spent six hours discussing the safety situation of the US Helicopter EMS industry. I found the summary interesting and wonder how much progress that organization has made on what they proposed as initiatives resulting from that meeting.
One section of their effort was to identify factors that lead to accidents and set a priority on addressing them.
The participants consolidated the factors into the following:
Causal Factors
Organizational Culture/Attitude
Training/Implementation (Pilots, crews, management, mechanics)
External Factors/Pressures/money
Standardization (Ops, FAA, Regional, Industry)
Commitment (money, equipment, time)
Risk Management
Statistics/Survey Industry & line pilots
Decision Making
IFR Competency/Proficiency/Currency
Human Factors
Pilot Error
Zero Accident philosophy
Weather (FAA minimums, Industry minimums, Training, Reporting)
Pilot qualifications
Communications
Flight Ops (VFR/IFR, Day/Night, LZs)
Technology/Equipment
Regulations (& following them)
Monitoring Cockpit actions
Utilizing Lessons Learned
The participants were asked to vote for the 5 areas that were the most important factors affecting industry safety, in order to come up with a group prioritization of these factors.
The results were:
First Priority: Organizational Culture/Attitude
Second Priority: Training/Implementation (Pilots, crews, management, mechanics)-- 40 votes
Third Priority: Standardization (Ops, FAA, Regional, Industry)-- 24 votes
Fourth & Fifth Priorities: (tie, both with 22 votes) Pilot Error and Technology/Equipment
Other factors received these votes:
Decision Making – 21 votes
External Factors/Pressures/money – 20 votes
IFR Competency/Proficiency/Currency – 20 votes
Zero Accident philosophy – 19 votes
Weather (FAA minimums, Industry minimums, Training, Reporting) – 17 votes
Commitment (money, equipment, time) – 11 votes
Human Factors – 11 votes
Statistics/Survey Industry& line pilots – 10 votes
Regulations (& following them) – 10 votes
Utilizing Lessons Learned – 9 votes
Communications – 6 votes
Pilot qualifications – 4 votes
Flight Ops (VFR/IFR, Day/Night, LZs) – 4 votes
Risk Management – 3 votes
Monitoring Cockpit actions – 3 votes
Highlights are mine not the report's.
Do the priorities arrived at by the operators, managers, FAA, and other non-line pilot persons seem similar to those line pilots might consider important? The Upper echelon of the industry do not seem to rank Risk Management and using Lessons Learned very highly. I wonder why that is?
Am I wrong in thinking a good Risk Management effort combined with learning from past incidents/accidents would go a very long way towards preventing accidents all by themselves?
Last edited by SASless; 3rd Jan 2006 at 03:15.