The philosophy and implementation of safety in the air
Mr A.B. Wassell
formerly of Rolls Royce
Safety is a subject that none can afford to ignore especially those
involved in the business of air-transport. This is equally true for
all other forms of transport and must include the regulators,
manufacturers and operators (and sometimes the passengers who are
transported). It is often said, or implied, that the manufacturers
and operators are only interested in profit and therefore will
automatically sacrifice safety in order to maximise that profit. This
is plainly nonsensical because any enterprise caught up in a major
disaster will generally lose far more in costs, disruptions,
liabilities and reputation than will be saved by deliberately ignoring
risks.
The quantification of those risks, however, may be difficult and there
may well be situations which are beyond control or assessment.
Accidents will, therefore, unfortunately always occur, but it is
incumbent on each industry to quantify and then, minimise all
foreseeable risks and thus accidents and loss of life. This involves
the complete assessment of all aspects of the engineering task using
the best practices available and consideration of the historical
record of past accidents and previous service experience. These serve
to provide lessons which illustrate with hind-sight, the areas where
our knowledge falls short of our ambitions.
