Why is safety important ?

[hugel]

Theis is not a facetious or obvious question, and I am having a great deal of difficulty answering it.

Apart from the obvious moral imperative - ie injuring and killing people including oneself is a Bad Thing, why is it so important to an airline ?

I would really like some insight to this from the safety practitioners among you :ok:

Is safety important because:
a) it preserves my airlines assets
b) a safe service will always be more attractive to customers
c) a responsible attitude to safety and risk is seen as important without further justification
d) it represents the biggest risk that the airline company can take ?
e) saves money on insurance policies and claims

This is not intended to be controversial, I am simply looking for the real drivers of safety.

Thanks for any responses
hugel

[Genghis the Engineer]

(1) I've been to too many colleagues wakes and funerals.

(2) Every time we have even a very minor accident it diverts enormous resources away from the job we're really here to do.

(3) Accidents mean that we screwed up somewhere, and I take that personally.

That's enough, but there's also insurance, corporate liability, personal liability...

G

[bfisk]

I'm sitting in the pointy end, and I don't want to die. For me, it's that easy.

[GenuineHoverBug]

Why is there no:
.....
f) All of the above

[What Limits]

f) It saves money due to low employee turnover
g) All of the above

[Apollo30]

Don't blame me for a partially cynical answer!

I think one of the most important aspects is, that people killed by aircraft accidents had a very passive role in these accidents.
Let's start with active-role-accidents: if you control (or try to) any kind of system with risks and dangers, you normally accept these risks. For instance, compare driving a car, driving in car races, dangerous climbing, canyoning, skydiving and so on. In most of these cases, the risk is is higher than taking a commercial flight from A to B. If a skydiver dies, who cares? He knew the risk, he accepted his risk, he tried, but he failed. He had an active role, but wasn't good enough to survive.
the situation is different, when people have a passive role: passengers in cars, busses, aircrafts, ... There, people expect a safe trip. And there, they also do not want to be reminded, that there could be any risk. Here they have to rely to other person's accuracy, skills, behaviour.

What can be easier accepted by an individual (you?):
- risk of death when taking a flight being 0.000001 (no real value)
- risk of death when doing skydiving (...) being 0.001 (no real value)

[hugel]

That is an interesting answer as we sometimes forget that as passengers we simply accept the service in return for money and they play a passive part in the events that follow.

I have looked at a number of sources now, and even some of the Health & Safety sites seem to treat safety as the "bedrock" or "cornerstone" of the industry without elaborating further on what this really means.

Now I am not disputing whether safety should be the number 1 priority, but I am sure that many companies must have to make financial decisions based on achieving an acceptable level of safety (similar to ALARP).

For a low-cost airline, even the accusation of cutting corners on safety practices could be disasterous, but how is balance achieved when allocating resources ?

hugel

[Pat42]

I think Apollo hits the nail on the head!

As a passenger when you get on an aircraft for X number of hours you are completely handing over your control of all significant safety concerns to the crew of that aircraft and the company they are working for. Personally I'd considered that a major responsibility and would expect the airlines to take it very seriously.

Obviously there is always a trade off. Being safe costs money and although there is always more you can do it tends to get exponentially more expensive to do so, eventually a line has to be drawn somewhere. Its a bit of an oversimplification but I guess ultimately the market (i.e. the passengers and what exactly they are prepared to pay) is the driving force which dictates exactly where that line is drawn.

[bfisk]

Pat42:

Well the basic problem with what you outline here, is that people will try to drive that line towards lower-cost-lower-saftey until people start dying. Since we don't want that, and since people are so blissfully ignorant and tend to think "it won't happen to me" we need regulations to protect people from their own bad choices.

Are the regulations strict enought today? Too strict?

Safety doesn't just happen. Aviations outstanding safety record is not a matter of inherent safety, like people tend to think. It the people working with flying (engineers, pilots, cabin crew, dispatches, meteorologists, air traffic controllers etc etc), that make it safe.

As you said the line has to be drawn somewhere. But imho the public can not be trusted to choose where, on the basis of cheap flights. We need regulation.