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Old 24th Aug 2013, 09:10
  #453 (permalink)  
cludow
 
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: Newcastle, UK
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Standard vs local

I don't fly except as a passenger or a sunny Sunday PPLer but I have been in the industry for over twenty years as an engineer and manager in the organisations that screw together the hardware you guys fly. I wonder how you would feel if we in manufacturing became all chauvinistic about whose way of torquing bolts was best? Or maybe different ways of programming the FADEC or AP? Maybe the French CMM is better than the British for the Trent engines? The GE90 engines are serviced at Nantgarw in Wales but built in Durham NC and Cincinnati OH.

My point is, it doesn't matter where any of this happens geographically or culturally because there are standard methods developed by the TC holder's Design Authority that are applied universally. FAR145 keeps everything safe for us all and hardly anyone is unprofessional enough to ignore the regulations. Those that do, wind up in jail and out of the profession - usually following an incident.

We are trained to look over our own shoulder at work and imagine explaining the choices we make to a board of inquiry. If we follow the standard process and there is an incident, we examine the process. Once we deviate from the standard, we are personally accountable for every consequence that flows from that decision.

If we as an industry can manage it when we build aircraft, surely it follows for those that operate the aircraft. Regardless of what the eventual "standard" RT procedure looks like, we just follow it and continuously improve it? There is no room for iconoclasm or petty chauvinism in an inherently risky environment. I've listened to poor ATC all over the world whether it be a US ATCO who thinks "Pushing Tin" is a documentary and apes the stereotype represented or the bone headed Spanish jabbering ATCOs who will eventually cause an incident in their own airspace by reducing situational awareness for everybody else.

The idiot chauvinist who ignores the standard and the idiot pedant who refuses to acknowledge the possibility that the standard could (and should) be improved have one characteristic in common...stupidity.
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