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ADJUSTING AIR SAFETY PARAMETERS
In the 14 months since the disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet and its 239 passengers and crew gaps in operations have been revealed that had never been imagined by the industry.
May 1st 2015
A long haul passenger jet disappears, with 239 passengers and crew onboard, and has yet to be found after 14 months of searching. A ground-to-air missile shoots down a commercial aircraft flying over the Ukraine last July. No one survived. Read More »
A suicidal pilot flies his aircraft into a French mountain. Again all lives were lost. A short haul journey between Indonesia and Singapore becomes a death sentence for its passengers after the aircraft crashed into the sea in bad weather. Several lesser incidents and accidents in Asia have taken lives and injured many.
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It’s been an unnerving 14 months for the airline industry, which the director general and CEO of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Tony Tyler aptly summed up as “an extraordinarily difficult time”.
“Despite the improving safety trend, we have been confronted by a sequence of what seem like random disasters that have raised questions,” he told delegates at IATA’s annual safety operations conference, held this year in Los Angeles, in March.
“Three in particular have grabbed the global attention of the media and regulators. And that is understandable. Aircraft operating in open civilian airspace under radar control are not supposed to disappear nor be shot down by missiles.
“The first priority of all flight crew is the safety of those onboard. These assumptions have been up ended. And we, as an industry, are moving forward to identify and address what has come to light as a result of the recent tragedies.”
In the three most publicized cases – the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) MH370, the shoot-down of MAS MH17 and the tragedy of Germanwings flight 9525 crash in the French Alps – the industry has quickly sought solutions to prevent each of these accidents, in very different circumstances, from happening again.
Rapid development of satellite-based tracking systems is progressing. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has launched a new pathway to deliver warnings to airlines about conflict zones. Around the world, many airlines and regulators have changed standard operating procedures to ensure two crew members are in the cockpit at all times.
| Asia-Pacific regulatory oversight disappoints The director general of Association of Asia-Pacific Airlines, Andrew Herdman, said a major issue for airline safety in the Asia-Pacific is the failings of regulatory oversight in the region. A report earlier this year from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) said a third of air accidents in the region - from 2008 to 2012 - involved deficiencies in regulatory oversight and another 27% involved deficiencies in safety management. The director general and CEO of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Tony Tyler also has been focal on this subject. In a March speech in Jakarta he expressed concern about safety in Indonesia and warned it was a problem that was not going to solve itself. There also have been major problems in the Philippines, India and most recently Thailand, with carriers facing downgrades or bans in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere because of deficiencies in their regulators’ oversight. “That’s another reminder of something we’ve talked about many times. We need more effective regulatory oversight by countries,” said Herdman. “It’s no good being a very accomplished airline, operating to global standards and higher, if you have a national regulator that falls short of international standards. “It makes life very difficult because the airlines are subject to sanctions even though it’s the regulators of these countries that U.S. and the European Union are targeting. What’s happened in Thailand recently is another reminder that regulatory oversight must be taken seriously by governments throughout the world.” |
But airline industry leaders caution against “knee jerk” reactions to the accidents. Andrew Herdman, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) told Orient Aviation that 2014 was the safest year ever for commercial aviation.
“There is a contrast between the accident rate going down steadily and a small number of accidents that are unique, but generate great public interest.
“The public response builds pressure to do something, to address individual accidents. There is a danger you jeopardize 30 million plus safe flights every year with changes that may have unintended consequences.”
Herdman said the Germanwings case is an example. Evidence suggested the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, locked his captain out of the cockpit and deliberately steered his A320 into a mountainside killing all 150 passengers and crew.
“Several years ago, reinforcing the cockpit doors was a response to the hijacking threat. Now we have to ask what will happen if the threat is from the other side of the cockpit door? Hijacking threats are very rare. You have to weigh up a very low probability of an unpredicted event that causes a tragedy - approximately one in a hundred million - before we make changes. We must assess what a new rule will do to the overall safety performance of the system,” he said.
IATA agrees. “It may well turn out that some, or all of these [recent] initiatives, will be superseded by other measures, arrived at via a thorough, well-researched, collaborative process, based on global standards and best practices,” Tyler said.
“This has been the industry’s modus operandi for decades. It has helped make aviation the safest form of long-distance travel the world has known.”
Examples of the “knee-jerk” reaction aren’t hard to find. After the March Germanwings crash, the German air traffic control authority called on the aviation industry to consider technology that allows people on the ground to take remote command of a passenger plane and land it safely. “We have to think past today’s technology,” said Klaus Dieter Scheurle, head of the Deutsche Flugsicherung.
| Social Media’s impact on safety investigations However safe the industry is statistically, most experts conceded accidents are inevitable, but many believe the impact of social media on safety investigations can be unhelpful. At the annual IATA safety conference last month one of the topics discussed was the pressure to respond immediately to an accident. The director general of the Association of Asia-Pacific Airlines, Andrew Herdman, said this pressure for an instant response to accidents or incidents is now irresistible. “In the past, you would conduct a very measured accident investigation over 30 days, produce an initial report and then conduct a fuller investigation in 12 to 18 months and submit a final report,” he said. “Now we live in a world of real time media news reporting and tremendous pressure to reveal information before it has been validated. This makes people who have been in the industry a long time, including accident investigators, rather uncomfortable. “How do you meet current public expectations and maintain public trust when there is a frenzy of speculation that could be fiction, not fact. You can’t say ‘give me time, leave it to me, we’ll study it and let you know’. Accident investigators are feeling that pressure.” IATA director general and CEO, Tony Tyler, said the industry’s responsibility is to keep flying safe, but it had to fulfill it in a world where expectations are constantly changing. “The Germanwings tragedy is a good illustration of change. Almost immediately the leaders of three nations visited the crash site,” he said. “And as more information was released it dominated conversations around dinner tables, across social media networks and also in the traditional media. How we fulfill our promise on safety is in the global public spotlight. And the challenge becomes even more intense as the nature of accidents is changing with their rarity. “We want every flight to be a safe one. And we have come extremely close to meeting that goal. But accidents still happen. Finding the cause of the accident and implementing measures to avoid it happening again will always be paramount. But in today’s reality the need to communicate constantly — even when we don’t have all the answers — has taken on critical importance.” |
Herdman said the fact a human being is in the cockpit has always been comforting for passengers. “Taking remote control of the aircraft has been discussed in the case of pilot incapacitation. It’s technically feasible, but it opens up other risks about the reliability of that control. You still have a pilot on the ground doing the flying anyway.”
Another facet of the current debate about safety is the extent fully-automated aircraft should be allowed to over-rule pilot input. “A lot of the fly-by-wire technology incorporates protections in that regard, but when a situation develops where the pilot wants to do one thing and the aircraft’s system wants to do another, what rules do you lay down about controlling those situations?” asked Herdman.
“Nobody wants a situation where the autopilot won’t let the pilot fly if the pilot has a broader sense of the situation. Automated systems are fine if they are working fine, but when you have major mechanical failure automated systems are not very good at determining what to do if you’ve lost a lot of electrical power or hydraulics. A human being can adjust to that situation.”
An example of this situation was the Qantas A380 flight QF32, which suffered an engine explosion after take-off from Singapore, said Herdman. “It’s hard to imagine the automated system would have brought that to a successful conclusion. It was the human pilots who worked very successfully to manage a crippled aircraft and bring it back safely,” he said.
Since the Germanwings tragedy in March, when it is alleged the pilot was suicidal when he took control of the aircraft, another tenet of established air safety has been challenged: the systems airlines normally use to monitor the physical and mental health of their cockpit crews.
The recruitment and training of pilots is exactingly regulated. Once they are flying commercially they are subject to continuous monitoring and regular medical check-ups. Now the debate is about including psychological testing in the annual medical assessments pilots must undergo.
Currently, the assessments focus on pilots’ physical health such as eyesight and cardiovascular fitness. Some observers said a system that relies on self-reporting by pilots who are suffering from depression or other mental issues is flawed because most crew are highly unlikely to report diagnosis of mental health problems if it could end their careers.
Skaiste Knyzaite, chief executive of Lithuanian-based AviationCV.com, a provider of aviation staff including cockpit crew, said in a statement that recent tragic events cast a shadow on some aviation safety related procedures, particularly pilot mental health evaluation.
“It appears that even though hundreds of lives are in the hands of an aircraft pilot daily, it is pilots themselves who are responsible for assessing their own mental health. Airlines perform thorough background checks and seek reference letters for prospective crew but all that is done at the beginning of pilots’ careers,” she said.
“Later on, yearly checks, containing a couple of tick-boxes regarding mental illness is all that’s done to evaluate the overall capability of an aircraft pilot, leaving him as the sole authority to decide if his mind is set for the job.
“Note that one in four people around the globe are affected by a mental or neurological disorder according to the World Health Organization, so such an attitude rightfully becomes the reason for public concern.”
She added many regulators are reviewing their procedures in the light of recent events, but most of them say the current practice of assessing mental health is sufficient. “Moreover, they claim that no matter the changes, it is impossible to ensure that accidents caused by pilot’s mental stability are eliminated altogether,” she said.
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Better progress has been made about commercial airlines operating over conflict zones. Last month, ICAO launched a website that distributes warnings about risks to aircraft. Setting up the website followed the downing of MH17 over the Ukraine on July 18 last year. The initial advisories came from the U. K. and warned of the risks of anti-aircraft weaponry in Libya, Iraq, South Sudan and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.
AAPA’s Herdman said Iraq objected to the bulletin. “It’s a reminder of how difficult it is going to be to persuade countries to share intelligence and opinions. There’s a subjective element to it. It could be contested by other States who have a different view and obviously different interests,” he said.
“It’s good that it’s up and running, but it’s going to be very interesting to see the quality of information. It’s just an additional input to an already very complex process of risk assessment.” He said it did not change the fact that airlines have to be mindful of guidance from the regulators and whether it’s mandatory or advisory.
“Ultimately, it’s up to airlines to assess everything, including the weather and operational risks and threats. Each airline has to decide where it is going to fly. By the same token, passengers can choose where and how they want to fly.
“We have to recognize the risk assessment is a complex system and it works well. Can it be improved? Certainly. But this new initiative has to be seen in the context of that overall decision-making process.”
Herdman criticized ICAO for carrying out safety audits then leaving enforcement to others. “We’re not supportive of the fact that it’s the U.S. and the EU see their role as the key enforcers of this policy. We’d much rather see that ICAO showed more leadership, not by just publishing the audit finding but holding States accountable for the fact they are not compliant,” he said.
Tyler said that on the technical front, data will guide understanding of the minutiae of what is happening during a flight to make flying even safer. “We do not really have a choice. Much of the low-hanging fruit that can deliver major safety improvements has been harvested. As a result, there are so few accidents that they cannot yield the trend data that is vital to a systemic risk-based approach to improving safety. In 2014, there were just 73 accidents of all types, in 38 million flights,” he said.
“Future safety gains will come increasingly from analyzing data from all flights, not just the infinitesimal percentage of flights where something goes wrong (0.0002% last year). That is what is behind the Global Aviation Data Management (GADM) program. It is a comprehensive safety data warehouse. GADM includes analysis reports covering accidents, incidents, ground damage, maintenance and audits and data from nearly two million flights and over one million air safety reports.”
| Search for MH370 widens The mystery of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) missing flight MH370 persists, but as the deep sea hunt for wreckage in the primary search area in the Indian Ocean approaches its scheduled end this month, the governments involved announced the search zone will be doubled. In a Kuala Lumpur meeting in April, the transport ministers of Malaysia, Australia and China said that if the aircraft was not found in the current search area, they would extend the search area by 60,000 square kilometres. The renewed efforts will expand the search area to 120,000 square kilometres. The MAS B777, with 239 passengers and crew aboard, disappeared on March 8 last year on its way to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Not a single piece of wreckage has been found, despite a massive and painstaking search of the sea floor in the southern Indian Ocean. In a joint statement after the meeting, Malaysian Transport Minister, Liow Tiong Lai, Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Warren Truss, and Chinese Transport Minister, Yang Chuantang, said the expanded search area “covered the entire highest probability area identified by expert analysis” for location of the aircraft. The second phase of the search will cost an estimated US$38.74 million, which would be borne by Malaysia and Australia, Liow said. The total search area, including the extension “would cover 95% of the flight path,” he said. The current search area of 60,000 sq km, considered by experts to be the likeliest final resting place of the aircraft, lies 1,600 km west of Perth, Western Australia. Four vessels, equipped with sophisticated underwater drones, have been involved in the search. |
