Expression of the week

A tolerance of "risk creep" was the telling term used to describe an inadequate corporate safety culture during a recent aviation safety symposium at The George Washington University Aviation Institute. Dr. Anthony Ciavarelli, Ph.D., a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, said the attributes of good and bad safety cultures are remarkably consistent across such activities as the nuclear power industry, military aviation and commercial aviation. "I've covered them all," he said. As an example of "risk creep" he pointed to the use of night vision goggles used by U.S. Navy F-18 pilots. Because of the goggles' restricted field of view, pilots were prohibited from flying below a certain altitude. However, when improved goggles were fielded, the altitude floor was lowered. Examples abound of "risk creep" (as distinct from risk-taking) in the airline industry. While there may not be total agreement, a suggested list comes to mind:

Allowing key safety positions to languish unfilled.
Inadequate maintenance of aging aircraft.
Pilot pushing (re flight time/duty time and fatigue).
Profiling in lieu of full positive passenger bag match (PPBM).
Inadequate fuel reserves.
Disconnecting thrust reversers or discouraging full use thereof.
Hard-to-read, unclear and/or time-consuming checklists for smoke in the cockpit.
Precision centerline tracking within the airways system (rather than using an offset to preclude head-on mid-air collisions).
Trans-Polar and Trans-Siberian operations with inadequate preparation for emergency landings.
Ignoring ground proximity warnings.
Extended twin-engine operations (ETOPS). These operations may be more directly analogous to the night vision goggles example above. Just as the altitude floor was lowered with improved goggles, ETOPS single-engine flight times have been extended with improvements in engine reliability.
Land and hold short operations (LAHSO), also known as simultaneous intersecting runway operations (SIRO).
Simultaneous ILS approaches to parallel runways.
Decreasing vertical and horizontal separation standards (e.g., RVSM and FAA tolerance of minor ATC lateral separation infractions).
Inadequate control of unapproved/undocumented parts.
Regional jets with hard wings (i.e., no leading edge slats, making the airplanes potentially more vulnerable to in-flight icing. The F28 mentioned above in the crash at Dryden did not have slats).
Publishing a "shame list" of chronically late flights, thereby pressuring pilots to hew to schedule.