Passenger seriously ill.

[Capt Pit Bull]

One's purpose in the cockpit is to exercise the judgment necessary to eliminate risk by finding it, identifying it, taking other courses of action, opening a back door to nullify the risk by making it safe, etc.

I'm not saying that one should accept risks if they are avoidable. What I'm saying is that some risks are unavoidable. In aviation often they are very small, but we are in the business of managing them not pretending they don't exist.

Not accept risk or balance or manage risk. Acceptance of risk is a fallacy that's far too pervasive

Well, apparently not as pervasive as the idea that risks can be totally eliminated.

One does not undertake a flight as a pilot, nor as a passenger, with the expectation of fatalities,

Thats correct - but only because we have made the industry relatively safe, so if you multiply the probability of an accident on your flight by the number of passengers on the aircraft you get an expected number of fatalities that is very small, but not zero.

Although many are purely ticket price driven, there's a sizeable number of people who consider an airlines safety culture when deciding who to fly with. There are certain operators I wouldn't fly with.

In other words, I'm prepared to accept risk (and so is everyone else) but given the choice I'll choose less risky.

Certainly, when procedures are considered, the suggested plans of action are usually based on expert opinion of the balance of risks.

and one does not make a decision based on the number of expected fatalities I do not elect to take an ILS vs. a VOR because one might produce more fatalities than another,

Well, thats exactly my point.

In general, not specific to the original scenario: If the alternative to flying a non precision approach is that a diversion is required, then clearly it would be expected that a professional crew would fly a non precision approach. Statistically, non precision approaches are riskier. But assuming they are properly trained and in current practice, there is no reason why such a course of action should introduce an unnacceptable degree of risk.

What we're saying is that we are prepared to accept slightly more risk (note the risk wasn't zero to start with!) in the name of expediency (i.e. actually getting the passengers to their destination.)

Every aspect of transport safety is about that balance.

when one undertakes a flight as a passenger, one knowingly accepts the fact that the flight takes place above the surface of the earth, where access to medical personnel, armed police, friendly bank tellers, and the expectation of religious counseling for personal issues is somewhat removed, nigh impossible in most cases. This is a given. One knows that one may indeed experience a heart attack, or a pulled groin muscle, or a chipped fingernail, and have no way of dealing with it. This is what the passenger accepts with the purchase of a ticket to ride.

Actually, I think you'll find that passengers accept that there is some risk, but expect you to consider every available option. Please remember I originally said that the course of action was probably to continue, but that I wouldn't rule out a return without considering it. There's no doubt in my mind that personal injury lawyers would have a field day if you assessed a return as have no additional risk but necessitating a breach of CAT3 recency requirements.

Unless the act is both legal and safe, it's unacceptable

In my opinion this is a somewhat naive mindset. It hinges around the idea that the 'rules' cover every eventuality. Well they don't.

What about the situation where the ONLY choices are:

a) riskier but doesn't break a rule.
b) safer but requires a rule is broken.

or worse still:

a) Breaks one rule.
b) Breaks a different rule.

If you aren't in the habit of thinking about risks, and aware of the risk assessments that were considered when making the rules in the first place, then the whole shooting match can come unglued. IMHO those who are not prepared to even consider that they might at some point have to break a rule are more likely to completely lose the plot if they find themselves in a double bind.

Sometimes you just have to go for the lesser of two weevils.

pb

[herman the crab]

May have missed parts as scanned though thread, but...

1. Define heart attack - are we talking cardiac arrest, myocardial infarction or maybe even angina.

2. Things may have changed in past few years but at one time Gatwick had a dedicated paramedic on site, Heathrow had an ambulance and crew satationed there as did Luton and I believe Stanstead were looking at the same system as LGW. I believe most BAA fire crews are also EMT trained...

HTC