[SystemSafety] Comparison of Confidential vs Non-Confidential Reporting Systems

Grazebrook, Alvery AN alvery.grazebrook at airbus.com
Wed Oct 17 15:48:51 CEST 2018


There's another layer to it as well - from society's perspective: the visibility and nature of the victims of accidents. Aircraft accidents are very visible, and the people who are impacted by accidents tend to be wealthy. I'm sure some of the biases mentioned in the "Bounded rationality or ignorance?" thread come in to play as well. The end result is that there is far greater social pressure to achieve safety for aircraft than in mining or shipping for example. 

The result is that aircraft industry has a very broad safety culture, spreading across the aircraft manufacturers, the airline operators and the government authorities. The breadth I think enables working practices (such as reporting) that would be difficult to sustain in a more fragmented safety culture in other sectors. 

As a comparison, I was very surprised by the personal risk associated with medical procedures that are accepted as normal and the risk associated with flying - In medicine it appears to be accepted that the safest procedure under general anaesthesia will have a 1 in 10^5 risk of complications resulting in death, whereas taking a flight is around 1 in 10^9. You could take 10 flights a year for your entire life and still carry much less risk than a single operation. It's hard to tell whether society has its priority straight on this. 

Cheers,
	Alvery

** note: these opinions are my own, not necessarily those of my employer

-----Original Message-----
From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Robert P. Schaefer
Sent: 17 October 2018 2:10 PM
To: Tim Schürmann
Cc: systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Comparison of Confidential vs Non-Confidential Reporting Systems

I’m thinking historical reasons, from a Lindbergh biography by A. Scott Berg I read years ago. 
Aviation in the US was funded by the government for air mail. To save money Inexperienced army pilots 
were recruited and started dying from accidents in high numbers. Lindbergh, promoting flight safety called
out president FDR’s actions as the cause for their deaths. Safety regulations then came into force, 
but by making FDR angry, Lindbergh (an ex-Army pilot and also an America First-er) was prevented 
from re-enlisting as an officer during WWII.

> On Oct 17, 2018, at 8:59 AM, Tim Schürmann <tschuerm at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> 
> On 17.10.2018 14:49, Mike Rothon wrote:
>> [...]
>> 
>> In general, I am trying to understand why it is considered to be
>> beneficial for aviation, but not necessarily elsewhere.
>> [...]
> One reason might be:
> There is only one "safe state" for aviation: "Not Flying/Moving", while
> other industries have more possible "exits" in case of a safety event.
> 
> Just my 2 Cents..
> Maybe someone with more experience could enlighten me? ;)
> 
> 
> Kind regards
> Tim
> _______________________________________________
> The System Safety Mailing List
> systemsafety at TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE

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