Ramón Martínez Lanao
Inspector Comandante de Líneas Aéreas. Iberia
_____________________________________________________________________________
Nowadays many people ask questions about how safe is going to be their next flight. This is not easy to answer because many different factors have some or great influence on it, but the most important idea about aviation safety is that the industry is constantly monitoring and narrowly studying incidents and accidents that already have happened all over the world, this improving safety records. In my explanations I`m not going to consider air sport such delta wings, aerobatics, parachutes, gliders, whose safety records cannot be mixed with those in the air transport industry, much more safe of course.
There are four main groups of causes that have induced incidents and
accidents along aviation`s history:
Statistically speaking most of the accidents have happened because of
weather (70% due to wind shear) This
phenomena is produced for stormy conditions in the vicinity of an airport. I´ll
explain how this problem is being treated. Other factors related to storms have
also induced a great number of accidents.
Navigational errors: they are also guilty of a huge number of crashes
mainly during descent and approach to the intended airport at night or inside the
clouds: Minimum Safe Altitude Concept.
Engine or mechanical failures: In the 60´s a jet engine individually
considered used to fail a mean of once per year (internal failure). Nowadays a
modern turbofan is going to fail once every 32 years. In the 26 years that I
have been flying in my company I had two engine fails (due to oil leak) with
engines built in the 80´s. Another kind of failures could be mentioned as well
like hydraulic, pressurization, etc.
There´s another very important group of accidents that used to happen in
the past related to mid air collisions, mainly in USA due to the great number
of small private planes flying to or from main airports. Today there are
thousands of planes flying all over the world and this is one the most
important problem to be treated. For example the north Atlantic is the area
with most dense air traffic in the world
(from Europe to USA and vice versa) .
In the previous four main groups there`s a common factor that affects to
all of them; the human factor. Pilot´s errors and mistaken assessment of a
determined situation can provoke an incident or an accident. So the question
is:
HOW THE AVIATION INDUSTRY FACES ALL THESE CHALLENGES TO MAKE THEM IMPROVE OR DISSAPEAR?
All these years they have working mainly in these areas:
The first one is making more reliable airplanes improving frames,
engines, systems, etc, in order to prevent failures in flight.
Another wide field to work has been to develop ATC systems and
procedures to prevent conflicting traffics in all ATC areas and in all phases of flight: taxi, take off,
cruise, descent, approach and landing. One of the most important advance here
has been the implementation of the well known system called FANS: the FANS
"C" to fly over remote and oceanic areas: Siberia, Africa, Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans, etc and the FANS "B" to fly over the HDTAS (high
density traffic areas) over Europe, USA, etc. This system combines
navigation/communications capabilities considering the world as a whole. It`s
being implemented but it will take some years to be completely available. Curiously
it is already working in the most developed world: Europe, USA, North Atlantic,
etc but not yet in those remote areas where it is most needed: Africa, Asia,
etc.
To prevent bad weather conditions modern radars help the pilots to avoid
stormy weather and what is more important: these radars are able to detect the
famous "Wind shear" phenomena during take offs and landings when the
airplane`s speed is minimum.
And the last but not the least area to improve flight safety is the one
that affects the human factor: accidents investigators along with aircraft
manufacturers and government officials have been deeply working in CRM (Cockpit
Resource Management) and in the FAIL SAFE concept. CRM pretends to make the job
in the cockpit more coordinated avoiding mistakes that can led to an accident.
As an example just think that 80% of the work to train astronauts is CRM and
the rest of it, systems management and knowledgement. "Team work acts as a
safety net aboard an aircraft".
FAIL SAFE concept seeks to "expect" pilot errors rather than
make them disappear: a bad pilot would make many mistakes, a good one few but
just one error is enough to have a
disaster. Of course pilots are trained to avoid mistakes but systems are
developed to cope with them so that the accident does not happen. Some of them
are the TCAS (Threat Collision Avoidance System) to prevent mid air collisions,
the GPWS and mainly the EGPWS (Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System). Other
systems are also present aboard a plane to avoid pilot errors, they are mainly
warning configurations: incorrect flaps setting for take off or landing,
landing gear not extended, centre of gravity out of limits...
I hope this brief explanations can be an introduction to this subject
but many days would be necessary to see them deeply step by step.
Than you. Ramón Martinez Lanao