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Aviation Human Factors Related Industry News

2020; Hogrefe Verlag; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1027/2192-0923/a000185

2192-0931

Air Traffic Management and Optimization

Free AccessAviation Human Factors Related Industry NewsPublished Online:April 03, 2020https://doi.org/10.1027/2192-0923/a000185PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInReddit SectionsMoreEuropean Plan for Aviation Safety 2020–2024The EPAS, a key component of the European Aviation Safety Program, provides a coherent and transparent framework for safety management at regional and State level, supporting the goals and objectives of the ICAO Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP).The 2020–2024 edition includes 180 actions, among which the complete set of EASA rule-making tasks. A new structure for the list of actions is presented to better highlight key risk areas and improve the link with the domain risk portfolios presented in the EASA Annual Safety Review.EPAS constitutes the regional aviation safety plan for EASA Member States, setting out the strategic priorities, strategic enablers and main risks affecting the European aviation system and the necessary actions to mitigate those risks and to further improve aviation safety. EPAS is a 5-year plan that is constantly being reviewed and improved and updated on a yearly basis. The plan is an integral part of EASA’s work program and is developed by EASA in close consultation with the EASA Member States and industry.The main objective of EPAS is to further improve aviation safety and environmental protection throughout Europe while ensuring a level playing field, as well as efficiency/proportionality in regulatory processes. EPAS’ aspirational safety goal is to achieve constant safety improvement within a growing aviation industry.This EPAS edition, being the 9th edition of the plan, brings about the following novelties:•Strategic priorities are consolidated based on input from the EASA Advisory Bodies and to consider new technological developments and business models;•Strategic enablers are updated to reflect recent developments;•Safety information stemming from both the Standardization Annual Report and the Annual Safety Review is better articulated;•Further alignment with the ATM Master Plan is achieved and the recommendations stemming from the Report of the Wise Persons Group on the Future of the Single European Sky and of the Airspace Architecture Study performed by SESAR JU considered;•New developments in the area of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Uspace are included;•The recommendations from the C-UAS (Counter Drones) Task Force are highlighted;•New or amended roadmaps are presented on rotorcraft safety, general aviation and artificial intelligence;•A new structure is provided for Volume II (containing all EPAS actions): EPAS actions are grouped per domain, thereby strengthening the link with the domain risk portfolios in the Annual Safety Review.For further information, please visit the EASA websites at https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/EPAS_2020-2024.pdfhttps://www.easa.europa.eu/document-library/general-publications?publication_type%5B0%5D¼%20144Dell Announces the Top 20 Most Rugged Jobs Out ThereComputer technology company, Dell Inc., is recognizing those who work in the most extreme environmental elements and in some of the most labor-intensive settings.Not everyone goes to work at sitting desk or a quiet office every day. Many individuals work in demanding, labor intensive, exhausting environments for work. Some scale 20-foot trees, carry heavy machinery, dig deep into the group, or test a 15-foot electricity pole. David Plourde from Dell outlines the company’s analysis in a blog post on the company website, and the top 20 most rugged jobs may surprise you – or not. Dell’s Rugged testing lab team studied each of the jobs intensively to discern which were the most taxing. The testing lab even used a durability test on specialty to devices in the following elements:•temperatures hot enough to fry an egg and cold enough to freeze an ice cube,•stormy winds up to 70 miles per hour and nearly 6 inches of rain per hour,•40 mile-per-hour sandstorms.The evaluation of the jobs also took physical demands, injury risk, and environment into account.Dell’s Top 20 Most Rugged Jobs are the following, in no particular order:•Oil & Gas Engineer•Mining Machine Operator•Construction Worker•Electrical Line Technician•Rescue Worker•Geologist/Volcanologist•Marine Biologist•Pilot•Police Officer•Commercial Fisher•Military Personnel•Firefighter/EMT•Demolition Expert•Farmer•Storm Chaser•Warehouse Logistics Operator•Insurance Claim Adjuster•Manufacturing WorkerFor a full report on the analysis and the Rugged Labs team, read David Plourde’s blog post: https://blog.dell.com/en-us/do-you-have-what-it-takes-top-20-most-rugged-jobs-in-america/Claims in Aviation Are Skyrocketing, Despite Better Safety RecordsPassengers can take a deep breath – the global airline industry has had some of its safest years in recent times when it comes to fatalities. This news comes despite a number of crashes, according to a new study from Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS), though the report also notes that the long-term improvement of risk management records is challenged by a growing number of claims and risks.“Air travel has never been safer in the history of aviation,” said James Van Meter, regional head of aviation programs and product development in North America for AGCS, adding that the insurance company partnered with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, known as “the Harvard of the Skies,” to analyze some 50,000 aviation claims. “We looked at the trends and it’s very clear that it’s never been safer to get on to an airplane as a passenger. If you look at how many unfortunate deaths and fatalities occurred just between 1959 and 2017, there were almost 30,000 aircraft accidents that led to fatalities and, in 2008–2017, that number dropped to almost 2,200.”In fact, flying on an airplane is one of the safest ways to travel today – safer than even a bicycle and definitely safer than travelling in a car. There are a couple of key factors that have led to the vast improvement in the safety of air travel, according to the AGCS aviation expert. One is the aircraft itself, which is constructed better today and has safer systems in place as well as improved engine reliability.“You very rarely see an engine incident [or] engine failure leading to an aircraft crashing whereas a decade ago or 20 years ago, that was a very frequent occurrence around the world,” Van Meter told Insurance Business. “In addition to the improvement in the aircraft and the hardware is the training that pilots receive today. Twenty years ago, simulator training was really just becoming the norm, whereas now we’re in a fully mature training environment where every airline pilot goes through simulator training usually every six months, and there’s been improvement on things like crew resource management and constant communications.”That improved safety record doesn’t, however, mean that there aren’t some risks that still exist. For one, the potential for aviation insurers to pay out large sums has grown.“Probably a decade ago, the average thought was that fatality would cost between $1–$3 million, and we’ve really seen multiples of that recently,” explained Van Meter. “You put that into the context of an aircraft that again a decade ago, 20 years ago, it was a lot for it to have 100 people on board. Today, there are aircrafts capable of carrying 600 passengers. You take the potential pay-out per passenger, and you multiply that by 500 or 600. All of a sudden, you get to a very big number and that has a huge impact on the aviation insurance marketplace.”With potential awards per passenger reaching millions of dollars, a major crash could result in a liability loss of up to US$1 billion in the future, the report said. It also warned of a range of emerging risk scenarios, such as the projected demand for new pilots – about 800,000 over the next 20 years – which brings challenges in recruitment and training.“Certain events throughout the early 2000s have impacted the growth rate seen in air travel and with airlines, but now we’re really in a boom cycle in air travel where we see the amount of passengers flying continue to increase drastically around the world,” explained Van Meter. “Obviously you need more pilots to fly those airplanes, so it’s really driving the demand for new pilots.”One of the key takeaways of the AGCS report is that while it’s never been this safe to fly on an airplane, from the insurance side, the technology brought into the aircrafts and the new manufacturing processes, like the use of composites instead of alloys, leads to much more expensive aircrafts, and therefore leads to much more expensive repairs.“While we see the safety rates in aviation from a fatality perspective dropping, we see the claims and the amount of money that it costs to handle those claims skyrocketing,” underscored Van Meter. “What cost maybe $10 million a few years ago, today could easily run $90–$100 million dollars.”Reproduced with permission from Insurance Business, https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/ca/news/breaking-news/claims-in-aviation-are-skyrocketing-despite-better-safety-records-195857.aspx. Original published by Alicia Grzadkowska on January 7, 2020.Citation Crash Provides Lessons on Family AssistanceOn February 15, 2005, Tricia Coffman did not want her husband to step aboard a private jet the next day. She asked him to fly commercial, worried about his safety. He promised her that he would be fine and that no matter what he would find his way back to her. The next day, her husband, David Joseph Coffman, Sr., awoke early and departed for a trip from Richmond, Virginia, to Santa Ana, California aboard one of his company’s Cessna Citation 560s.Operated by Martinair, Circuit City’s Citation 560, N500AT, had scheduled fuel stops in Columbia, Missouri, and Pueblo, Colorado. The twinjet crashed as it headed toward the second fuel stop on a ranch 4 nm east of Pueblo Memorial Airport, killing two crew and all six passengers, including 34-year-old David Coffman.Tricia Coffman read the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) probable cause citing “the flight crew’s failure to effectively monitor and maintain airspeed and comply with procedures for deice boot activation on the approach, which caused an aerodynamic stall from which they did not recover.”But her story to attendees at the 2020 Air Charter Safety Foundation’s Air Charter Safety Symposium was not about the cause. It was about her personal experience – how she learned of his death; how she explained to her four children, all of whom were too young to fully comprehend; and how her husband’s company and the NTSB handled the aftermath. This experience, where Circuit City embraced her as family, got her through her worst nightmare, she recalled.Don Chupp, president and CEO of Fireside Partners, which specializes in emergency response programs, in introducing Coffman to attendees at the ACSF symposium on Tuesday, noted that much attention is paid to safety leadership. Equally important, though is leadership on the family assistance. “It’s a responsibility of everyone in this room,” Chupp told attendees. “Even if you are not bought in on the emotional aspect, you’ve got to be bought in on the business aspect. The best countermeasure to protect your house after a bad event is through the people most directly affected.”The best way is to stay connected, he added. “When people feel as though they are not cared about, communicated with, and cared for, how do they express that frustration?” He said, adding there are at least other professions willing to listen if the companies involved don’t and contended that “taking care of people in a bad scenario is exceedingly simple.” But he added that people will not give themselves permission to do it. Companies have “notify families” in their plan, but never how, by whom, and to what degree involvement comes with it.Coffman said sometime after the events surrounding the death of her husband, she learned that Circuit City senior executives were advised to avoid too much contact with the surviving families because anything they could say may be used later against them in a lawsuit. The CEO of Circuit City at the time, W. Alan McCollough, responded he didn’t care – let them sue. He was going to do the right thing.Eric Jonas, senior v-p of human resources, broke the news to Coffman on February 16, sometime after lunch. Her voice quivered at times as she recalled the events that had occurred 15 years earlier. She remembered being told, but not much what was said. She was in a fog. She made a couple of calls to family members to share the news and then remembered sitting on the ground, wondering what good could have come out of this. Coffman said she had lived her life understanding that what had come her way was for the general good, even if she couldn’t see it at the time. But at that moment, she said she could not have seen any good. She remembered seeing a bus pull up down the street and wondering how the rest of the world was moving on as hers had stopped.At that point, her 4-year-old David came into the room and she realized she would have to share the news with him, her 3-year-old daughter Sarah, and 15-month-old twins Alexander and Sydney.Not able to fully grasp or believe the news, she called the county sheriff’s department in Pueblo for confirmation. She was told at the time that 7 were found and an 8th was still being located. In Coffman’s mind, the 8th was her husband David. He promised he would return to her. The sheriff’s office then gave her a contact with the NTSB. The investigator was en route to the crash scene at the time and did not have much information. But she was advised that chances weren’t good that he survived. The next day she received a call that the 8th was located.Coffman then felt a need to go to the scene. She began to research flights, a hard task given the busy ski season. Circuit City executives called and asked if they could make arrangements for her to visit the scene.The next day a van arrived with Circuit City human resources executives on board to take her to the airport. They told her not to worry about anything but clothes. Baskets of toys, diapers, food, all awaited her and her children at the hotel in Pueblo.Circuit City had notified the airport and security detail met them at the airport, whisking them through security and onto the airplane before other passengers with as much ease as possible. On the airplane, the crew, notified of the grieving family’s arrival, came back to introduce themselves and said they were aware of the situation. In Denver, the family was similarly escorted through the airport, luggage handled for them and brought to cars awaiting them.There she met with a person the company had assigned to see to everything through her stay in Pueblo – a “guardian angel,” Coffman said.When they arrived counselors were there, as was the Red Cross, and officials from the sheriff’s office to make sure they had food and anything else they could need.The next morning, they met with the NTSB and went to the crash site. The kids initially remained in the car as Coffman looked at the wreckage site, trying to make sense of what happened and where David Coffman may have been during the scene. There was a small memorial set up on the ranch with flowers. Her oldest had left the car, drawing a smiley face in the dirt, saying he wanted his dad to know he was there and he wanted him to be happy.She later called the coroner asking to see her husband but was informed it was a violent crash and her husband was not recognizable. Given the fact she could not see him, she still had a hard time grasping it was true and didn’t want to believe it.Later Coffman received dog tags that her husband had worn. The NTSB had found them and asked that they be handed over to Tricia Coffman at the appropriate time. The fact that her husband was on the airplane made no sense to her. David Coffman was with different passengers than she had expected. But then Tricia Coffman learned there were two airplanes on the trip and David Coffman was originally aboard Circuit City’s Citation 560 N500FK. During the refueling stop in Missouri, he agreed to move to the other Citation jet, N500AT, after learning of an imbalance of passengers aboard the two aircraft.She had met executives from Martinair and said she recognized their grief. They had lost as well.When she returned home, David Coffman’s vehicle was in the driveway. Circuit City had arranged for its return. The company later had held a memorial service at their offices and telecast it to regional offices.During that service, the human resources director – the same who had made that first call – told employees: “This is our family. We need to wrap our arms around these people…forever. This is our family.” And as such, shortly after the CEO of the company, as well as his wife, came to Coffman’s house. Coffman said she did not know really who they were, she was still in a fog. But she did know he came with a bag of books and sat on the floor and read to her daughter. His wife built Lego with her son. These visits continued regularly every other Sunday. On the odd Sundays, the president of the stores would visit. “They took care of us,” she said. This meant excursions to restaurants, movies, and parks to make sure she and her family got out of the house. Circuit City also saw to them financially, continuing pay and full bonuses for a year and health care for 3 years.A year later a memorial was held in Pueblo commemorating the loss. One item still missing for Coffman was her husband’s favored watch. She wanted to pass it along to her eldest son, but it had not been found. She and another widow, who was still missing her spouse’s wedding ring, went a day in advance to look for the lost items at the wreckage site. After an exhaustive search, they had nearly given up the search for the small items on the vast ranch. When she did discover them, just by a lark and nowhere near where they would have expected to be found, Coffman said she felt that closure, that somehow David Coffman had found his way back to her.Coffman stayed in constant contact with NTSB, calling them periodically with questions. She read the probable cause to the audience at the safety symposium and noted the regulatory changes and congressional interest that surrounded it. She said she had participated in meetings and appeared before congressional panels. But her focus was not so much on that. It was on her interactions with the company and how her family was taken care of in the aftermath. The fact that everyone dealt with her directly was a big help, she said.Looking back at the day she sat on the floor, she said, “to me, Circuit City was the positive. NTSB was the positive.” Her children have vague recollections of the time, but they remember the trips to the park, she said.Reprinted with permission from AIN Online, https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2020-03-03/citation-crash-provides-lessons-family-assistance. Original published by Kerry Lynch, March 3, 20201Parts of this section are compiled from “Aviation Human Factors Industry News” and reproduced with permission of Roger Hughes.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 10Issue 1March 2020ISSN: 2192-0923eISSN: 2192-0931 InformationAviation Psychology and Applied Human Factors (2020), 10, pp. 53-57 https://doi.org/10.1027/2192-0923/a000185.© 2020Hogrefe PublishingPDF download