Back in the 90 ties we went to Boeing to discuss our SOP.
In the back of my mind was a non-augmented crew that had to deal with a failure after a long flight at a critical moment.
I said let’s keep it simple and conservative and look at the statistical failure rate of key components. In the end they liked the idea of not using the full redundancy capability in our SOP since it would happen only once in 10 years that we would throw away some revenue.
The regulations told use we could do certain things in one country and not so in another.
I tried to keep the box of Pandora of endless technical discussions, that can not be solved by regulations closed, until the commercial department find out what we were doing.
They wanted to sail too close to the shoreline and got caught.
My previous Airline had set more stringent criteria and sometimes our performance with the same aircraft as the competition was much lower and we left some payload behind.
Until the day that the unfortunate happened, we looked at out calculations and said: “Thank god that we did it that way, since we would NOT have been covered by the regulations in order to survive"
Surely in court we would have been able to defend ourselves, but that is not enough nor is it the issue.
Big Airlines are at a commercial war with each other but we are not soldiers.
Boeing actually liked the idea, some called it lateral thinking.
Also, Airbus made a statement in Flight International: “In case of an engine failure on a four engine Aircraft you take the safest course of action”
In the end it's all about money, lawers and politics.
Maybe we should look at Airline safety the other way around and put in the spotlight those that are conservative and give them a rating for it, that is what audits should be all about.
Last edited by AIMS by IBM; 19th Apr 2006 at 08:59.