On this forum we collectively and at times with passion, meander around arguing about mis-loaded bags (happens every day somewhere on many carrier good and bad), conditions and strategies and yield management and LCCs etc etc etc.....
But back in the real world.....over on the Military Forum there's a thread running about the very recent report on the crash of an RAFG Nimrod in Afghanistan about 3 years back. As a stunning indictment of how cultural change can in fact be a creeping organisational suicide it ranks with the Presidential report into the Challenger disaster of 25 years back.
As professionals we should all carefully read the Nimrod report and ensure we take where we can, the key lessons into our daily personal and professional working lives, in AIPA/AFAP technical and safety committees, in the questions we ask at "Road Shows", in the entries we make in the Tech Log, in our responsibilities as PIC for the whole of the flight etc etc etc.
If we don't focus our efforts into this most fundamental of issues we will continue to lose not just working conditions, but our role as the final gatekeepers of public safety. We can no longer say that "Management (including CASA) run the show, we fly the planes". We can't trust that KPIs, spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations and new buzz words will guide our world.
Read this:
"Mr Haddon-Cave condemned the change of organisational culture within the MoD between 1998 and 2006, when financial targets came to distract from safety.
He quoted a former senior RAF officer who told his inquiry: "There was no doubt that the culture of the time had switched.
"In the days of the RAF chief engineer in the 1990s, you had to be on top of airworthiness.
"By 2004 you had to be on top of your budget if you wanted to get ahead."
If you google
'Independent review into broader issues surrounding loss of RAF Nimrod in Afghanistan in 2006" you'll be able to download the report. Spend a few bucks and print off a copy and carry it with you for a while.
There was a world of technical and operation excellence but I fear it died long ago, probably the day our CAA finally retired its last aircraft. It will take some personal and collective strength for each of us to take up that slack and look management in the eye and ask if they've read AND digested the Nimrod report. Anyone of them who hasn't or won't stands damned professionally.
When I next get home I will print off a couple of hard copies and send them to the senior management people I know in QF,
VB and JQ and CASA. If many others do the same it might be a good wake up call. A lot of the "new" management assume that all their precious flow-charts and systems will always keep the punters safe. If we don't tell them that the "Emperor has no clothes" who will?