Flight safety has considerable paradigm differences for industrial safety. The first one was born upon the need of the activity’s survival. The life expectancy of pilots, of the U.S. Air Mail Service in the 1920s, did not exceed four years. Thirty-one out of the first forty pilots died trying to meet deadlines in adverse weather conditions, with a forced landing every twenty hours of flight. Currently, the pilots pay basically the same amount of life insurance as any other citizen. This evolution is a compelling evidence of its effectiveness.
The commercial aviation had to deal with an of the human beings’ utmost fear: the fear of flying.
The accident with the airship Hindenburg, at Lakehurst, during the thirties, had eradicated this mode of transportation of the market, despite the fact it was considered extremely safe for the standards at that time, simply due to the impact caused by the live radio broadcast.
Since then, numerous initiatives seeking to guarantee the flight safety credibility were developed. These advances sped up during the fifties, as it can be easily referenced to the Jerome Lederer’s – Mister Safety – initial effort. He was considered the civil aviation flight safety “father”. From this point, the practices of damage prevention and investigation gained institutional character and were rooted on almost all instrumental technology areas, as defense industry, petrochemicals, pharmaceutical, space and mechatronics
On aviation, however, this advance allowed that an activity that grows more and more intense on a riskier environment, to still being considered as one of the safest ones.
Working since 1983 with flight safety and since 2003 with industrial safety, I consider that the greatest difference of paradigms between both areas is the fact that the prevention actions and safety precautions on aviation are considered inherent and inseparable parts of the processes. On general industry, safety and productivity sometimes seem to compete as they were different things. The role of the flight safety professionals is merely advisory, being the operational safety an operator responsibility, in opposition to, for example, the fact that, in Brazil, the Labor Safety Engineer is eligible to criminal prosecution in the case of an accident occurrence.
Drawing a cartoon from reality, to try to represent this difference, sometimes I imagine that, using the Labor Safety practices during an approach for a difficult airfield landing, such as Congonhas, SP, at night in adverse weather a Safety Technician (not licensed as a pilot) would be seating between the captain and the copilot, as well as a Safety Engineer (not qualified as a Air Controller) would be supervising the controllers, to “guarantee the safety”.
There is no doubt that this is a polemic subject, but it seems to me that discussing it could bring benefits to both flight and industrial safety.
Alberto Oliveira