Premium On Safety - Issue 16, 2015 - 5

ASI mESSAGE

Partnering...

Success
Expectation

(continued from page 4)

By BRUCE LANDSBERG

It is a valuable way to have our voice heard, learn about other
user group safety concerns, share ideas, and communicate with
parties with whom we don't often have direct contact.
warmly welcomed and share a conversation that enlightens both sides to each other's
operational requirements and limitations.
As you can see, for our company it's not just the pilots and maintenance personnel
that can benefit from getting involved, growing, and learning-it's the entire organization. We have shared with our company leadership and risk management a more intimate look into what we do each day, and we have gained an increased buy-in to our
safety management system. We have also shared our relevant knowledge and experiences with each group we worked with and are confident that as we partner together
in the future we can build on the proactive approach we have to safety. One thing
stood out to all, and that is that we all desire to have a safe operating environment at
our local airport.
These events were not only insightful and informative but enjoyable as well. I urge
you to partner with your local airport community; I'm confident you'll find it to be
equally valuable.
Captain David Miller is the safety officer for GEICO's Flight Department. Reach
Captain Miller at dmiller@geico.com.

LESSoNS LEARNED

PART 4 of 4

Wrapping It Up
By DAVID JACK KENNy

We hope you're now convinced of the value of reinforcing safety training with factual
evidence. The importance of following best practices becomes obvious after examining
the events that motivated their adoption. Done thoughtfully, data analysis and monitoring can offer diagnosis and treatment for operational shortcomings that could prevent
your flight department from attaining the margin of safety you expect-even if you are
that department, all by yourself.
How so? Suppose you made a habit of reading NTSB accident narratives as they're
issued, perhaps giving particularly close attention to aircraft and operations similar
to your own. Even a single accident-say, a loss of control during the takeoff roll after
an underinflated tire blows-might get you thinking about how closely you monitor tire
pressures and whether you've been leaving something to chance. A spate of similar
accidents-landing overruns on wet runways, perhaps-could be the cue to review your
entire procedure for airport selection, reference speed computation, and criteria for
going around or diverting to an alternate.
Having defined the question, it's time to start digging. Maybe you've already got a solution-check tire pressures before each day's first flight-or maybe it needs to emerge from
the data. Either way, start compiling a roster of relevant accidents, remembering two essen(continued on page 6)

Recently, within the space of just
a few days three accidents hit the
national consciousness, if there
is such a thing. First was a midair
collision right here in Frederick,
Maryland, followed by a Beechcraft
King Air managing to find its way into
a FlightSafety International's simulator bay at Wichita's Mid-Continent
Airport in Kansas, and finally,
Spaceship II suffering a catastrophic
in-flight failure.
Is there a thread here-something
in the water-a bad moon a-rising?
No. The only commonality is that
all these tragedies involved loss of
life and aeronautical machinery.
Each situation is different, and yet
each will be shown to have a chain of
events that, in retrospect, could have
been prevented. What can we take
away from these horrible crashes
even early in the investigations?
Reminder for me is to take nothing
for granted. That's really hard to do,
especially when everything pretty
much always works. In each case
there were prior successes to buoy
confidence.
How many times have you had
traffic called and never seen it, but
it missed you? How many times have
you taken off successfully? We do
these things all the time and get
away with it probably out to four places to the right of the decimal point.
As you go about your flying activities be mindful of distraction. Multitasking can be a big problem in
aircraft. Complacency is another
really bad actor. Coexisting with powerful forces that never take a day
off means we get no time off either
when flying.
Safe Flights...

Bruce Landsberg
Senior Safety Advisor, Air Safety
Institute
5

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