FAA Officials: Agency Cultural Change is Working

Risk management and shared responsibility took center stage at the Flight Safety Foundation’s 62nd annual Business Aviation Safety Summit (BASS), co-sponsored by NBAA, in Denver in May.

In his keynote address, John Duncan, FAA deputy associate administrator, Office of Aviation Safety urged cooperation between his agency and the business aviation community, telling attendees, “We are all on the same team,” citing the agency’s new Compliance Program, which aims to fix safety problems rather than affix blame, as an example. Duncan acknowledged the FAA’s own commitment to safety and procedures have come under question in the wake of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max losses, and that it now faces multiple investigations. “We welcome them,” he said of the inquiries. “Part of the challenge that you can probably see in the press is a lack of understanding of exactly how we manage risks.”

The score of presentations and panel discussions led by more than two dozen aviation safety, training, medical, and operational experts over the two-day conference pointed to ample causes for concern and action. FOQA (flight operations quality assurance) data reveals business aircraft are using progressively more and more available runway—all other variables factored out—over time, according to data cited by the GE Aviation corporate flight operations quality assurance program’s Shelby Balogh, a data and analytics scientist. Concomitantly, runway excursions—one of NBAA’s Top Ten areas of safety focus for 2019—remain the most common type of business aviation accident. Ten business aircraft went off the runway from December 2018 to March 2019, including one carrying the U.S. Vice President, noted Advanced Aircrew Academy director of instructional design Erika Armstrong. Four, a Beechjet; Citation 550; Lear 35; and King Air 300, in one week.

The president of training provider Convergent Performance, Doug Downey, a recognized risk management and safety expert, Air Force Academy grad and F-16 and F-117 fighter and demonstration pilot, cast complacency, or smug self-satisfaction, as the enemy. Calling risk management “a constant state of uneasiness,” he urged taking personal responsibility for avoiding complacency and improving beyond expected standards or norms. Ask, “What’s different about this task today?” and  “What have I become complacent with recently?” For clues, identify and examine “close calls/near misses” in your personal life—lost or misplaced cell phone or car keys; a forgotten appointment or task that slipped you mind.

The challenge of gaining corporate buy-in for investments in safety is an ongoing challenge, and in Resilience and Crisis Management in Aviation, a Strategic Risk Management Perspective, Ellen Shew Holland, president of Strategic Risk Frameworks, a risk management consultancy, suggested using strategic risk scorecards used in mainstream industries as templates. She presented examples of scorecards for market competition; natural disasters; and plans to combine corporate operations. Each template rates probability; level of impact; velocity, or speed of impact; and the total risk value each represents under both unmitigated and mitigated circumstances. Choose a couple of initiatives providing the best mitigation reward to get C-suite endorsement as a start, she advised.

Training, a linchpin in maintaining safety, must be adapted to millennials, who have different priorities, attitudes, behaviors, and expectations, said Lufthansa Aviation Training’s senior product manager, human factors training and senior human factors expert, psychologist Martin Egerth. Organizations must also recruit people that are a good cultural fit,  he advised.  

Few business aviation organizations provide Lufthansa’s resources for recruitment or career advancement for prospects, and that dearth exposes the entire community to risks that need to be recognized. Ground handling operations are among them, as International Business Aviation Council’s director of IS-BAH (International Standard-Business Aviation Handlers) Terry Yoemans stressed in addressing ramp safety issues. The fourth largest category of aircraft mishaps in the past decade, according to EASA, data from 450 ground incidents determined most (58 percent) occurred when the aircraft wasn’t under its own power. Contact with ground support equipment was cited in 41 percent of the occurrences; 20 percent involved towing operations; and 96 percent (432) resulted in damage to the aircraft, the 16-year average for such insurance claims put at $134,564.37.

A shortage of qualified ground handlers is behind many of these statistics, and Yoemans recommended operators choose FBOs based on their training of ground personnel rather than the customer service and fuel prices that surveys show currently drive FBO choice.

Challenges Remain Unchanged

Fatigue is now universally recognized as a critical safety factor affecting wide segments of business aviation and is becoming easier to identify and address. In Quantifying the impact of Fatigue on SPIs [Safety Performance Indicators] in Flight Operations and Maintenance, Dr. Daniel Mollicone, CEO of fatigue management consultancy Pulsar Informatics, included data from a recent fatigue management project for Alaska Airlines. A review of schedules of its 1,500 pilots found more than one-quarter (28 percent) of flights impinged on the window of circadian low (WOCL), when alertness and performance ebb. The airline used a Pulsar fatigue risk tool to help pilots construct less-fatiguing schedules, reducing fatigue reports 30 percent and fatigue calls—pilots unable to complete a scheduled duty period—29 percent. Should operators or crews seek benchmarks, Pulsar found once the pilot’s easily computed fatigue score exceeded 17, there was a 44 percent probability he would make a fatigue call. The probability dropped to 17 percent at a fatigue score of 14, and 11 percent at 13.

Improving the safety of single pilot operations is another NBAA Top Ten item, as the organization’s senior manager, Safety and Flight Operations Mark Larsen, reminded attendees. Single pilot accident rates are three times higher than crew rates, and their fatal accident rates are 13 times higher. Information overload, or not having the right information at the right time in the right format despite a glut of data, are blamed for some of the safety mismatch.

In Research and Development of Digital Copilot, John Helleberg, Mitre Corporation’s group lead, Human-Centered Flight Deck Research and Engineering, reported on development of an artificial intelligence tool that can help serve as non-flying pilot. Digital Copilot incorporates speech recognition; a cognitive assistance processor that monitors weather, airport information, and traffic pattern conformance; and an Inference Processor, which infers pilot intentions regarding phase of flight, destination airport and pattern leg. The device, which provides aural and/or visual alerts and responses, has been used in simulators, pilot workshops, and in flight, and in tests of simple checklist completions proved significantly faster than EFBs. Helleberg said Digital Copilot could sift through Notams for key information, and accident data to advise pilots about any hazards associated with a particular approach, departure or other airport environment issue. Mitre, a government-funded think tank, simply creates the technology for public use, he noted, and it is not currently in commercial development.

But as old safety threats are mitigated new ones emerge, as illustrated by the proliferation of lithium-ion batteries, explained by Capt. Boomer Bombardi, a cockpit smoke and fire specialist, member of the FAA’s High Energy Fire Training Enhancement (HEFTE) group, and of the Airline Pilots Assn, Int’l. An estimated 2.3 billion lithium battery powered devices are brought into aircraft cabins in the U.S. annually, along with their inherent fire danger. While the FAA is developing mitigation guidelines, carriers are instituting their own responses, often utilizing inappropriate equipment or failing to provide adequate training for use. Bombardi noted his wife is a flight attendant whose airline equips cabins with a containment bag, but no training in their use. His own airline provides gloves in the cockpit to handle an overheating EFB, “but they’re behind the pilot, where he’d have to get out of seat” to get them, he said. The good news is “there are a ton of great products out there,” but like all mitigating procedures and policies, “It’s really up to you to understand how you're going to use them in your operations, and what your procedures are going to be,” Bombardi said.