Lyman;
PJ2. Thank you, my friend, it is most welcome to find common ground.
We find common ground in your views,
Balance.
Equilibrium is the enemy of the entrepreneur, and in service to his own, and the culture of his clients and investors, the goals are set.
Action impels interest. Interest compels venture. Success breeds competition, and great success breeds ruinous competition. In the ashes of the ruins of failed schemes, survivors merge, freeze out competition, create their own credo and tacit co-operation, to create a stasis. Unsatisfying and not profitable, the goal shifts from value and service to survival, and it is these instincts that create danger. Success long gone, survival makes animals of men, and liars of the shepherds.
BEA will do nothing out of the ordinary, save to "maintain the status quo"
The document will be pure joy to dissect. In its language will be the compromise discussion of what I have just written. The industry is failing.
White knuckles used to have no basis in reality...
...which, rather poetically I think, states very well the blunt realities of the present economic crisis which, essentially though not exclusively through the absence of regulatory oversight, overtook the United States, not for the first time, in 2008 and is now overtaking Europe, (for different, though equally disastrous reasons).
The term "
neoliberal" as described in Wiki provides some understanding of why this notion of a political economy is important to understand. As
grizz observed, this may have the appearance of thread-drift but it is absolutely central to most issues which have raised risk in aviation. It's just that most primary causes of aviation accidents, (mechanical/technical, weather, communications, ATC, navigation, mid-air) have been resolved and as those who do this work know, HF is now primary and far more complex and seemingly inexact, (and therefore difficult to hold the attention of CEOs focussed on marketing, costs and strategic planning while fiscally staying alive and keeping investors content).
Those whose job it is to formally brag about safety records have a pleasant task these days because of the present excellent record but an abiding graceful reserve in such pronouncements is missing - they read more like marketing assurances than quiet statements of confident fact. Those who actually do the work know that bragging about safety is the first mistake; - just do it, because bragging satisfies, and disarms caution.
My frustrations and even some overhanging anger over institutionalized irresponsibility are simple and certainly aren't unique:
What do we do to in aviation to erect protective shields in the short term, and turn this around in the long term?
Believing its all going to h. in a handbasket is the wrong way to think about these trends - it isn't even close to falling apart but relief from the belief is no reason for comfort. The character of accidents has been changing - like Fukushima, Challenger/Columbia, perhaps like the RR engine explosion on QF32, we might first call these "
economic accidents" because of their fundamentally systemic nature which have origins in not in technical principles but in economics where sometimes there is a scent of parsimony and greed. We know that where the principles of finance rule, the notion of "inconvenient information" has currency and that seems tolerable until accidents occur and the pilots, not the organization's CEO and senior executives, are the 50,000A fuse.
The psychology of "not listening", or of "dismissal" is an under-researched area. Why, when even outsiders would understand, are the cautions of such experts as named here, ignored in favour of finance? What makes those in charge believe they are acting in the best interests of their organization when they ignore the observations of experts. This is the story of Fukushima and we see the results today...an industry destroyed, not because it is unsafe but because it was rendered unsafe by a psychology of diffidence towards "nay-sayers" on the one hand and of "can-do" on the other. But for a protected diesel generator, there goes Japan. Why?
These are economic, social, psychological origins, not merely technical or mechanical; - analyzing a fatal aircraft accident in such terms has been the province of a few writers, (
Perrow, Reason, Dekker, etc) but do the
CEOs, the
Boards, even the
regulators comprehend the shift such that corporate and public governance behaviours change? I don't think so, because our society excuses corporate error (vice human error) and the law protects those not directly involved, preferring "simpler solutions".
None of this is new or particularly difficult to understand. What is difficult to understand is the unwillingness to address the worst outcomes of a neoliberal economy in high-risk enterprises. That's what Feynman meant when he said politics can't fool nature*, (but we can add, politics fools us...all the time!).
*
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.