Passion For Safety

Safety is in everyone’s interest, but not everyone has a passion for safety. Generally, safety is defined as the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury. Danger is the state of being unprotected from external or internal forces. Risk is a probability calculation for an event to occur. Injury is physical or emotional damages. Safety is such a broad definition that it does not specifically describe future occurrences but is used to eliminate or reduce opposition to implement reactive events. Air travel has a reputation for being the safest mode of transportation. That everyone will be safe when travelling is a wish but is not attainable unless it becomes a goal of how to eliminate danger, risk, or injury. An aircraft may hit clear air turbulence at 41,000 feet, which then tears apart any wishes for a safe flight. A passion for safety is not to wish for a safety outcome, but to accept the forces of nature and work within acceptable unsafe parameters. Any time motion is involved, such as a moving aircraft, vehicle, or mountain climbing, there are latent condition waiting to cause danger, risk, injury. 

Passion is a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept. When one thinks of passion, usually, it is the thought of a driving force or motion that takes over. It is the one thing that keeps a person going regardless of what hurdles lay ahead and the thing that fuel that energizes a person when they are feeling depleted. Passion pushes a person through difficult times when they do not what it takes to become better. Everyone have the ability to create whatever kind of future they want, but secret to living the dream is hidden in passion and what is done because of it. Passion is an emotion to be acted upon. Without action, passion yields no worthwhile results.  When a person has passion for something, they love it even when they dislike it. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people, is that successful people, because of passion, do what unsuccessful people avoid doing.    

A person who is passionate about something, they are excited to do it, even if it is difficult or does not bring in any revenue or notoriety. When working with a passion for an issue, time seems to fly by, and it is easy to lose track of time when tasks are done. Passion is a tool to look forward to every challenge and task, including going to work, and a person becomes excited when thinking about it.

A person with a passion does not mind putting in the time or effort it takes to accomplish what it takes to achieve, and they happily will go the extra mile. A person with a passion goes on until being totally exhausted, and then goes on for another mile. A person with a passion only sees the horizon without an end and love the fact that there is no end in sight. A person with a passion feels right about what they are doing, they feel fulfilled, and well-being. There is a purpose when working with a passion. A passion has a major definite purpose. 

A definite major purpose is something that is personal. No other person can create it for another person. A major definite purpose can be defined as the one goal that is most important to a person. It is usually the one goal that will help a person to achieve more of other goals than anything else to be accomplish. 

Albert Einstein quote: “Every person is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to fly high, it will give its entire life believing that it is an inane”. Working with a passion is to find the area of expertise a person is talented for, or the personal area of intelligence. It is not for everyone to become the king of a country, or for everyone to do sleeping tests as work. Several years ago, a person in his golden years was stacking fertilizing bags on the production line. Every day he showed up happy and excited to do his job. It was by many viewed as an unskilled job and monotonous job. When asked about what the job was, he explained and show in detail how the process worked. Plastic pebbles were dumped into the processer to be transformed into plastic, a machine would form it into a tube, and it would go through a cutter and sealer to finalize the product as a bag. Bags were then folded by a machine and continued down the roller to the end where a person would collect several bags and place each bundle on a pallet. Each bundle was stacked systematically so that all bundles would stay on the pallet and not slide off. He had worked this process for many, many years. His passion was to be a part of a larger system, and a system that benefitted humanity. The bags were used to store synthetic fertilizer. 

This plant produced synthetic fertilizer since 1903 and was the plant where a superior synthetic fertilizer process was invented. The process was developed by an industrialist and scientist, along with his business partner, and based on a method used by Henry Cavendish in 1784. This process was used to fix atmospheric nitrogen into nitric acid, one of several chemical processes. The resultant nitric acid was then used for the production of synthetic fertilizer. At this plant a tall tower as built to extract nitrogen from the air. 

When packing the bags on the pallets, the passion was the larger picture, and to be a part of a global system where synthetic fertilizer was shipped all over the world to grow food in areas where it was difficult to grow. Packing the bags was just the first stage in a global system where he could contribute to the process. Without his expertise and knowledge of how to stack the bags, there would not be bags available to ship globally. Not only was the person a part of a global process to grow food in difficult areas, but also became a part of a Nobel Peace Prize winner scientist work to produce a robust crop to grow in places where food previously would not grow. Working with passion is what a person makes of it. 

Passion for safety in aviation is triggered by several reasons. When a young person witnessed an aircraft towing a glider and at 300 feet the glider pilot pulled the airbrakes and both aircraft crashed into the lake below. Some years later an aircraft turned final at the same airport, stalled, and crashed in the river. Several years later a Helio Courrier crashed when landing on a gravelbar in the middle of nowhere. All accidents had two things in common, that there were no fatalities, and the pilots made control inputs that made sense at the time, but in hindsight, they knew what the outcome would be. None of the pilots were surprised that it happened. Events like these triggered a young mind to make aviation safety a passion. Aviation safety was studied, the advent of the SHELL model, the PDCA model, human factors in aviation, flight training, and airport and aircraft design. Over years a picture was painted of a comprehensive aviation safety system, but still was an incomplete aviation safety system. The transition of knowledge from study and observations, to the regulated safety management system was an easy transition since the SMS introduced processes and data analysis into the equation. 

 
The aviation safety management system (SMS) is the industry standard for safety in operation. SMS was initially sold as a system to save cash and to prevent future accidents. SMS was a tool to help companies identify safety risks before they become bigger problems, which in operations did not happen. Passion for aviation safety was adapted by operators and their personnel. Over time the SMS did not deliver what had been promised. Accidents still happened, and pilots continued to make control inputs they knew in hindsight would create accidents. A prime example is the Boeing 737-210C combi aircraft that crashed when on approach to Runway 35T struck a hill about 1 nautical mile east of the runway. The aircraft was destroyed by impact forces and an ensuing post-crash fire. It was not their SMS that failed to prevent future accidents, it was the organization that operated within a system allowing for the flight crew to lineup final approach to a non-runway. When a system, such as the SMS appears to fail, that is the time when passion for SMS becomes critical to success. By the way, no matter how many accidents, issues, or occurrences there are for an SMS enterprise, an SMS cannot fail since all it does is to paint a true picture of the operations itself. 

Passion for SMS is beyond a passion for safety in aviation. Passion for SMS is a passion for systems, processes, acceptable work practices, data collection, and process analysis. An SMS is not at tool designed to prevent future accidents, since there are no data available to determine time and location of any next occurrence. An SMS is in itself reactive, including the proactive component of an SMS, since the future is unknown. The Titanic was unsinkable, and the Tenerife disaster had two highly qualified captains. The proactive component of an SMS is when an organization has a proactive process or system that provides for the capture of hazards. The capture of hazards is a reactive process since these hazards are visible and already there. Developing a hazard register is a reactive process since it is a reaction to known hazards. A proactive SMS is a system where hazards are nonexistent, unimaginable, or unexpected. The hazard of lining up final approach away from the runway, was not entered into a hazard register, since the hazard was nonexistent, unimaginable, and unexpected that it could happen. A proactive SMS is a system where statistical process control (SPC) is applied, and processes are assessed for common cause variations and special cause variations. An in-control process is an acceptable process. An out-of-control process requires a root cause analysis and corrective action plan. When using SPC as a tool to analyse processes, the issue changes from reacting to hazards, to reacting to processes. Using the SPC process is based on data only, is an unbiased process, identify known hazards as common cause variations, and identify unknown hazards as special cause variations. There are multiple rules to define a special cause variation in an SPC control chart, but a general rule is that any point above the upper, or lower control limits are special cause variations. 

When defining hazards as unknown hazards does not imply that they are not known to the aviation industry, or that airlines or airports have not experienced the outcome of any of the unknown hazards. An unknown hazards is applicable to one specific operator, as opposed to a group of operators, and these hazards are nonexistent, unimaginable, or unexpected to this specific operator. Hazards experienced by other operators may be used a reactive process by other operators and must be relevant to both types of operations. An example is windshear recovery. Recovery from a windshear on approach is different from types of aircraft. A windshear recovery by a light twin engine airplane may be different than a single engine aircraft, a wide body aircraft may be different than a business jet aircraft. Geolocation may also affect a windshear recovery. Windshear recovery on the parries, may be different than in the mountains. Using the SPC process and control charts, it becomes possible for operators to identify their own unknown hazards, conduct root cause analyses, and implement corrective action plans to prepare for occurrences. 

When building systems with SPC and using abstract ideas but not having a physical or concrete existence, it is helpful to the process to have a passion for the safety management system. A passion for safety may be more stressful than helpful, since there is very little happening during normal aircraft or airport operations. 

When working with SPC and the safety management system, there is no end in sight, and the view ahead is an endless horizon. This is a challenge for many, since everyone feel good when they can see the result of their hard work and a tangible result at the end of the day, but with an SMS there is nothing to show for. It is impossible to distinguish between start and finish. 



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