Accidents and Incidents Are Time Converging Events

By Didrik Strand offroadpilots@gmail.com
On a clear blue sky day one airplane left on a westbound trip, while another departed  on a southbound adventure, both bound to be on time for an unknown converging mid-air path. If the data of these two flights had been communicated, applied corrective actions would have separated their paths.

Mathematical equitation are applied every day to avoid conflicts when air traffic controllers (ATC) requests pilots to change speed or heading. These changes were not planned, but due to one or more variations new calculations predicted current paths to be converging in time.


A once perfect project may over time reveal its flaws. 
Unexpected variations, or special variations,  are hidden flaws hidden in layers of safety guards. Accidents happens when flaws are revealed in an unpredictable sequence and causing time crossing paths.

People are the strength of all safety processes with a unique ability above and beyond any automation in resilience, and the understanding of communicated data. Collected data of special variations are accumulate knowledge. This knowledge makes you wiser, not just older. How insignificant the data might seem at the time, it's an asset to improve safety.  

Special variations may be obscured by the view.
Communication is a key factor to manage safety. Tools and technology for effective communication to avoid time converging events may not be available at all locations, or in all types of airspace. The time to "time of no return" becomes relatively short when pilots first  have to establish visual contact.

Special variation management is to discover the unpredictable sequence at which these variations are revealed. 

BirdsEye59604

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Accepting or Rejecting Risks

By Didrik Strand offroadpilots@gmail.com
Image
Accepting or rejecting risks is a fundamental principle in a successful safety management system (SMS). A person managing the safety management system is expected to maintain a process for identifying hazards to aviation safety and for evaluating and managing the associated risks and ensuring that personnel are trained and competent to perform their duties as they apply to the safety management system. This includes training for both the accountable executive and SMS manager, in addition to other airport and airline operations personnel. A level of risk is an inherent element of aviation safety and there are several types of risks to consider when accepting or rejecting risks. One type of risk may take precedence over another type even if it is not directly associated with operations. Risk control strategies are beyond accepting or rejecting a risk, it is to justify control actions based on defined criteria. There are five categories of risks. The total risk is the sum of identified an
Read more

Lawless

By Didrik Strand offroadpilots@gmail.com
Image
A safety management system (SMS) is a regulatory requirement for airport and airline operators, the SMS regulations are performance-based, processes must conform to regulatory requirements, but still, a healthy SMS is lawless. In a lawless system events are unrestricted, actions are reactive to immediate threats, and data are collected by random chance. A safety management system contains multiple components to conduct research study of patterns. Research study design is a framework, or the set of methods and procedures used to collect and analyse data on variables specified in a particular research problem. A safety management system research study designs comes in many shape and forms, with advantages and limitations. A rule-based SMS is an overcontrolled system to justify an expected definite and unambiguous output. A system where predetermined results exists, is a system without trust, without learning, without accountability, and a system where information sharing impossible. A la
Read more

Human Factors

By Didrik Strand offroadpilots@gmail.com
Image
Human factors and human errors are two separate things but are often used interchangeable in conversations and in the aviation industry. Human errors are attached to a person who could be linked to an occurrence. In addition, the severity of the outcome is a predetermining factor how important it is to assign human error as the root cause after an accident.  Human error root cause analysis has widespread support from the aviation industry. However, with the implementation of the Safety Management System (SMS) regulations, accountability came into play, and it became impossible to justify human error as the root cause.  A healthy SMS looks at the organization and its systems, and the fact that a person overlooked, or missed an item is no longer a root cause, such as a pilot missing a checklist item. Checklists are required and are used for any flight, but there is no evidence a missed checklist item was the root cause of any accidents. At the other end of the spectrum, completing the ge
Read more