BarbiesBoyfriend, Maximum, lomapaseo - all excellent comments which add to this important dialogue; one can hear the voice of experience here. One hopes that the industry will as well.
If I might add a couple of thoughts, and I apologize for the length, but I think this has opened a very important dialogue: - First, we have come a long way in accident prevention and investigation. Since the fifties we have, to a large extent, resolved fatal accident causes from weather, navigation (including CFIT and TCAS technology), ATC and communications (eliminating confusion both ways; reliability, ADS is a huge improvement), system mechanical/airframe failure, charting, (TERPS/PanOps) and the natural and inevitable outcome of computer technology, the introduction of automation. I think we would agree that all these have contributed positively to the nothing-less-than-spectacular reduction of fatal commercial aircraft accidents over the past fifty years.
But the rate wasn't reduced to zero. It was becoming apparent that fatal accidents were occuring in perfectly servicable aircraft.
Aviation was the first enterprise to do it's own "intervention" and admit that what it thought was "perfect" was, with different "glasses" on, substantially imperfect. The medical profession/industry is just now beginning to see the same thing about themselves and their enterprise, thankfully.
What hadn't changed until lately (last twenty years) was how the human being behaved within a complex, technical system in which risk was comparatively high and failure was extremely costly in terms of lives and property, (I know we could argue this given present economic conditions, but by "other complex human systems" I mean such systems as finance, politics, education, etc) and the notion of ergonomics and even the seemingly obscure contributions of semiotics, (signs, symbols, meaning) were introduced to assist human perceptions of data which had critical roles in risk reduction.
The notion and "science" of human factors emerged as multiple responses to the low but continuing level of fatal accidents.
CRM emerged. More effective instrumentation, (there will always be arguments otherwise but the 3-pointer altimeter vice the drum altimeter is an obvious case), crew interaction and data display were improved so that the potential for confusion was minimal. And, with early thinkers/observers such as Charles Perrow, (
Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay,
Normal Accidents: Living With High Risk Technologies), Jim Reason, Robert Helmreich, Sidney Dekker and many other important writers on the "new' notions of organizational accidents and human factors.
The focus turned from solely on "the pilot" to the larger, "facilitating" factors which, had they been different, may have prevented an accident. "Layering" of preventative barriers became a standard technique so that the causes of an accident were thwarted at varying levels throughout the "causal" chain to use one metaphor among a few. I think processes such as the "
Why-Because", (Ladkin) analysis is a natural emergence of examination of all factors and not just the human ones in stripping away those illusions which can, and have, interferred with knowledge of what actually happened and why.
There is an old saying that, "
nothing succeeds like failure and nothing fails like success". If you can bear a short diversion from which I promise to return to the topic at hand, the neoliberal economic model, (Milton Friedman, Chicago School economics), which has it's roots in the '30's but towards which Reagan-Thatcher moved their respective economies, reduced what we knew as the "welfare state"; characteristics of neoliberal economics were, privatization of formerly-government-run responsibilitis, wholesale de-regulation to "get the government out of the way of the running of the economy", the reduction/elimination of government programs for people which were perceived as "socialist" in nature and therefore wasteful of the populations' money, all of which changed regulations governing corporations, making possible the unbridled drive for profit, (including the legitimation of the idea that keeping a competitive edge required "bonuses"), and creating in both corporate and regulatory minds, the "importance" of a speculative (vice manufacturing/service) economy.
To return to the thread, as promised, airlines, like dentistry and other industries, are early bellweathers of an economy. De-regulation promised the illusion of lower airfares. Whether it has delivered or not can be argued elsewhere not here but the fact is, corporate behaviours changed to accomodate neoliberal notions of deregulation.
Slowly, employees and "difficult" suppliers (both of whom were only trying to retain some measure of economic viability in their own right against the increasing drive towards profit and the battle against all those forces which were getting in the way of that profit, all supported by changed regulation, the public view of profit and the discourse of unchecked capitalism. Employees began to be seen as expensive corporate liabilities that needed controlling. Given the digitalization and communication capabilities of the world's economies, work, in the form of manufacturing and services, began to leave North America for less expensive employees - a very short-term solution to the challenges of maximum profit-making at best.
Management target groups for cuts/changes etc emerged and were increasingly portrayed as untenable, unsupportable, without deep economic solutions, (reductions in salaries, benefits, pensions, etc). Chapter 11 and CCAA in Canada were used to dump corporate debt, "restructure" towards the above economic arrangements and ensure "cheaper labour" would move liabilities such as employees over to the profit column. Deregulation permitted first the notion then the emergence of the "lo-cost" model, the only real, lasting success of which remain Southwest in the US and, so far anyway, Westjet in Canada as well as a few in Britain and Europe.
In a political economy in which wages, benefits, pensions have been driven lower and lower in order to enhance corporate presence and profitability and in which the future of these same factors is deeply insecure, the ability for ordinary people to pay what airlines ought to be realistically charging in order to retain some measure of stability and viability, is itself reducing. To put it simply, the notion that Henry Ford had in paying his employees well enough to be able to buy the products they made, has been completely reversed and the only products we can afford are those made in "cheaper" economies. Such an economy has been "bought", in some measure, with the reductions in wages, benefits and company pension plans.
The notion that aviation can be done cheaply, with reduced oversight because of it's enormously successful reduction in fatal accident rates, has its roots in the above barebones outline of how our political economy has changed since 1970. Due regard for risk is diminished, justified by how expensive it is to mitigate "what little" risk remains as seen in the very low accident rate - success becomes failure; the notion that aviation is "high risk" has been intentionally diminished; with reduced oversight as regulatory responsibilities are privatized (passed on to individual airlines). Data programs themselves may be seen as impediments to profit rather than enhancing profitability through the mitigation of risk.
The forces at work described very briefly here and certainly in blunt terms which fail to appreciate the enormous complexity and clear exceptions to such an assessment, have, as those who fly airplanes and work commercially know, always been at work in aviation - it's a very thin margin at best even in good times - but these forces have been exacerbated by the turn towards a neoliberal political economy in which all corporations, businesses, governments and populations struggle to adjust and make money in.
I take up time/space/bandwidth here in discussing these factors because these are the same factors which have driven airlines towards "lo-cost" mentalities: - To deal with neoliberal economic realities.
The greatest challenges to airlines has always been the cost of employees first, then the cost of fuel. While the two see-saw'd recently, I'm not sure and would have to research it but I think employees have now taken second place to fuel as being the highest expense for an airline.
When we arrive at the details concerning flight crews, "solutions" such as the MPL, reduced training footprints, retiring/buying out "expensive" (but experienced) older crews and hiring less experience because the human factors responses such as SOPs/CRM etc are interpreted by managements as "solving" such problems, hunting/hiring high-quality MBA-level business graduates and placing them in positions of wide authority based upon education, not aviation experience and having manufacturer's make claims and promises regarding the automation panacea that can save airlines the expense of the third crew member while increasing safety, (
another example of truth to be sure and which is embraced by cost-concious managements who need every cent, but the "qualifying conditions" such as reduced competency, reduced training, reduced cockpit oversight are largely ignored) - in short, we have, through a complex series of economic and political factors, ended up with institutionalized complacency and a regulator willing to vacate it's responsibility, all fully legitimated in the discourse of "automation" and other such responses to human factors, when in fact, the accident rates are telling us that this path is the incorrect one.
I write this because I think it is a valuable exercise in trying to understand why we have arrived where we have so that we can posit good solutions. I say this because we cannot just "go back". Our society has fundamentally, vastly, changed since the '70s - a "re-regulation" is certainly not in the cards nor is it the answer. I think we are smarter today than then but the solutions are difficult to get placed upon the table because they counter the economic trend and the economic discourse which has been established in peoples' minds regarding cost and profit and the value of experienced, well-trained and intelligent employees.
In other threads I and many have observed that those who would make excellent pilots are taking one look at the profession and choosing to go elsewhere to "make their fortune" because aviation not only is very bad bet in terms of remuneration and a secure future upon which one might raise a family (for non-aviation readers or non-pilots, it has been like that for
much longer than since last October), but does not reward intelligence, independance of thought, experience and imagination. The industry wants, to use the term, "cookie-cutter pilots" because they think that this is a legitimate and "safe enough" response to present needs. I am well aware that a certain level of standardization is needed but those that fill such a bill are going elsewhere and airlines' pipelines are starting to run dry of experience.
Second, while those with experience and history are always retiring and taking their knowledge of history with them, the present circumstances are endemic and not transitory. Experience will, of course, be gained, but what is being forgotten is, that experience was gained at a very high cost and the industry that provided that experience is being dismantled and young people know it and see it.
For those who lament the comments made by seasoned professionals here and in other threads, think on these factors and the potential outcomes. Books could be written on this phenomenon but of course, they wouldn't sell more than a few thousand copies at best - such knowledge and certainly such views are not welcome in any board meeting that I am aware of and are not welcome at some corporate safety board meetings I know of.
While I am keenly aware that these factors are very much at work elsewhere, I am here concerned with aviation and the effects of such trends will have on the fatal accident rate which has lately exhibited signs of stress, not in numbers but in the quality and circumstances of the accident.
Safety people always risk being dismissed as "the sky is falling" harbingers of doom. As well, I know that some industrial issues in pilots' associations sometimes mask as safety issues - (and sometimes, sadly, that is the only way to get the attention of an airline's management or the regulator).
The current trends are not unclear. What is unclear is, a) the government and then corporate response, and b), the nature of the accidents and the trends to which they contribute, and the turn that the curve takes over the next five years - up or down? It cannot remain steady.
I posit that these two outcomes will determine which way the so-far very successfully-reduced fatal accident curve turns. I'm sure the literature will be worth watching as will the response of the regulator and the airlines.