Basic Concepts — Page 10, Lesson 19

I want to walk you through the opening of the Basic Concepts chapter. We're starting with a hard look at why accidents happen, specifically when the pilot is the cause. Let me begin with the five most common specific causes of pilot-induced accidents, listed in order of how frequently they occur. Number one is loss of directional control — that means the pilot can no longer keep the aircraft pointed where they want it to go. Number two is poor judgement — a broad category covering decisions that don't meet the safety standard required. Third is airspeed not maintained — the pilot fails to keep the aircraft flying at the correct speed, which can lead to stall or loss of control. Fourth is poor preflight planning and preflight decision making — the groundwork before the flight, including route planning, fuel calculations, and risk assessment, is done badly or not at all. Fifth is not maintaining ground clearance — the pilot flies the aircraft into terrain, obstacles, or the ground itself because they lose awareness of their height above the surface. Now, let's look at the phases of flight that are most prone to accidents, again in order of precedence — meaning the most dangerous first. The highest-risk phase is intermediate and final approach — that's the part of the flight where you're lining up with the runway and descending toward it. Next is landing itself. Then take-off. And finally descent — the earlier part of coming down, before you reach the approach phase. Now we move into Flight Safety as a broader topic. I want to introduce the roles played by the various aviation participants in flight safety. Air transport is a huge system employing millions of people in thousands of different capacities. But we're going to focus on those who have a direct influence on flight safety, together with their possible limitations. First are the National and International Authorities — these include ICAO, IATA, EASA, CAA, FAA, and others. Their responsibilities include setting, implementing, and monitoring flight safety standards. They are also charged with developing the aviation industry within their field of influence. Here's the key tension: these two requirements sometimes conflict. On many occasions, responsible compromises have to be found. This conflict necessitates limitations which, in many cases, are based on either financial or political considerations. Next are Commercial Organizations — airlines, operators, and similar businesses. They can suffer from a similar dilemma. The financial position of the organization may drive flight safety parameters. Smaller companies can be particularly vulnerable to cash problems. The outward signs of these pressures can include: stretched crew duty times, poor rostering, unserviceabilities carried — meaning aircraft defects are deferred rather than fixed — weaknesses and short-cutting in maintenance and operational procedures, poor communications, lip service to minimum equipment lists — that is, pretending to follow the MEL properly without actually doing so — shortcomings and non-standardization of cockpit layouts, lack of passengers and aviation facilities, absenteeism, poor industrial relations, and a rise in accident rate. These are the warning signs that financial pressure is eroding safety margins. We'll build on this foundation as we go deeper into the human factors that affect every one of these participants.