Jetwhine

Aviation buzz and bold opinion

aviation safety

Three Cheers for ATC on its 75th Anniversary

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imageAny pilot who says an air traffic controller hasn’t saved his or her butt at least once is either lying or stopped flying after solo. Air traffic controllers are my best friends, and you couldn’t pay me enough to attempt their job at any facility or at any level. And aviation wouldn’t be what it has become without them. So extend them a quick note of thanks for all they do during the month-long celebration of their 75th year.

Shame on you if your first thought of ATC is about falling asleep. Remember this: In a hypercritical world of finger pointing and blame bombing, anyone or anything who makes a mistake or suffers a lapse when the body can no longer sustain the mind’s commands, is forever vilified…until it’s the next person’s turn. And that next person might be you. Remember the pilots, distracted by their computers, who missed Minneapolis?

imageInstead, think of this: 15,000 controllers at 263 control towers, 29 Tracons, and 21 Centers handle more than 50,000 flights a day. That’s an annual workload of 18.25 million flights safely separated, a task often taken for granted by the  by pilots and passengers on each one of them. And most of those airplanes want to be at the same places at the same time. ATC has come a long way from the crew of 15 spread across three airway traffic control centers in Newark (at right), Chicago, and Cleveland. Beacons had barely replaced bonfires and voice radio communication was cutting edge technology. Radar replaced  position reports tracked on chart tables, and it didn’t come on the scene until the 1950s.

The essential aviation partnership between ATC and pilots is now at another critical transition, from radar to the satellite-based Next Generation Air Transportation System. Like the transition that preceded it, this change isn’t going as smoothly as the people who depend on it like, and that goes for the folks in ATC as well as the cockpit. I know it’s your birthday, and that I don’t say it often enough, but thanks for being there and for all you do. I wouldn’t be here without you. — Scott Spangler

There’s Nothing New in GA Safety Because We’re Still Making the Same Stupid Mistakes

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2011 Safety Standdown

The notices arrived in my in-box almost hand in hand.  Analyzing the previous year’s data, the AOPA Air Safety Institute’s Joseph T. Nall Report for 2010 gives the good and bad news about general aviation accidents. And the  2011 Safety Standdown itemizes the FAA’s new multi-medium effort to prevent them.

The good news is that for-hire fixed-wing ops, from ag application to Part-135 transportation of humans and cargo, posted a substantial improvement in safety. The number of  accidents dropped by a third over 2008 and the number of fatal accidents (two ag applicators) fell 88 percent.

The bad news is that not-for-hire GA flight activity fell by 10 percent in 2009 (which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone), but the number of accidents dropped only 5 percent. The really bad news is that while we’re flying less, we’re dying more often. The number of fatal accidents increased 4 percent.

2010 Nall ReportPersonal flights, which used to account for the majority of GA activity, accounted for less than half of all non-rev GA flight time. It made up for its lost dominance by giving us more than three quarters of all GA accidents and 85 percent of fatal accidents.

The report goes on to categorize the number of accidents by pilot certificate. Private pilots, as one might expect, lead the pack, but that’s secondary to the fact that most accidents happen on flights made for personal pleasure.

The bottom line is that pilots haven’t learned from the mistakes made by  their predecessors. So the FAA Safety Team has sorted them into four themes—Positive Flight Attitude, Going Beyond Preflight, En Route Cruise, and Maneuvering Flight—in its new Safety Standdown.

[Read more…] about There’s Nothing New in GA Safety Because We’re Still Making the Same Stupid Mistakes

Psst! NASA … The Safety Data is Already Public!

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NASA’s administrator Michael Griffin said he made a mistake the other day and for many people that was enough. People do make mistakes and he said he was sorry.

Griffin was answering demands from the public and the press about his agency’s refusal to release safety data that might well affect the people who ride on the nation’s air transportations system. The reason for NASA’s refusal was just plain silly … they were afraid they might scare people and damage the system if people heard the truth.

Some nice public affairs person must have gotten to him though by telling him how incredibly stupid that statement made both him and the thousands of smart people at NASA look. This is a place after all, where people really are rocket scientists.

NASA now says it is going to come clean, but I still can’t figure out what the big deal is.

Everyone within the aviation industry knows NASA has been collecting safety data for decades … and it’s OK with us. We’ve been freely offering NASA aviation safety information through the Aviation Safety Reporting System because we thought we were going to help better the industry, not just to expand some huge government database that would never see the light of day. I’m thinking this must all be the same data everyone is talking about. And most of it is already public. [Read more…] about Psst! NASA … The Safety Data is Already Public!

NASA Safety Data Coverup Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone

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The only thing I find surprising about the revelation that NASA has been sitting on a mountain of aviation safety data is that anyone is even remotely surprised about the way that agency operates.

OK, maybe the fact that NASA sat on the data – 24,000 interviews – for years because they didn’t want to scare us caught me napping a bit, but just a bit since I thought keeping people cowering in fear was considered a White House strategy these days.

In a NY Times editorial, NASA’s administrator, Michael Griffin said, “NASA should focus on how we can provide information to the public — not on how we can withhold it.” The newspaper agreed.

I feel a whole bunch better now. In fact, I’ll bet Griffin is shaking in his boots, maybe even losing a minute or two of sleep over what the White House might do if they cared as much about people here in the U.S. as they do about promoting their agenda overseas.

Twenty-four thousands individual data sets is no small amount of data and NASA, quite honestly, should be embarrassed. And FAA should be embarrassed because they knew nothing about this as well … if that is indeed the case. [Read more…] about NASA Safety Data Coverup Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone