Aviation Workplace Safety Lags Other Industries

Air Safety Week, May 21, 2001

From employee safety perspective, the aviation workplace is one of the most dangerous

OTTAWA, Canada - Air travel is one of the safest modes of transportation, to the passengers, but the enterprise remains one of the most hazardous to those working in the industry.

Workplace injuries, particularly among flight attendants and ground handling personnel, remain high. Safety management systems and a workplace culture that fosters an aggressive approach to safety are seen as complementary approaches that can help the airline industry achieve levels of safety on a par with other industries. Indeed, the airline industry will have to dramatically improve its safety performance to achieve a level of performance comparable to other inherently dangerous enterprises, such as the chemical and petroleum industries.

"Aviation's performance has been poor outside of hull losses," declared Dr. Patrick Hudson. A professor at the Center for Safety Research at The Netherlands' Leiden University, Hudson declared that hull losses have become the "single outcome measure" that have led to a myopic, if not complacent view of safety in the airline industry. Hudson was keynote speaker at the Canadian Aviation Safety Seminar 2001 (CASS 2001) here, and he spoke on the conference theme of safety management systems, a dry term calling for nothing short of a cultural revolution for many companies. One of the major problems associated with using hull losses, Hudson pointed out, is that progress tends to be "based on the response after accidents."

"So we only get better by having accidents; we only learn by correcting the flaws revealed by accidents," he said.

To be sure, the hull loss rate has dropped to a commendable low. Jeff Hawk, director of regulatory compliance for Boeing [BA], offered the traditional industry view: a jet transport is taking off or landing every two seconds in today's global industry. Last year, me than 1.3 billion people flew on more than 18 million flights. Yet, he pointed out, there were only 11 fatal accidents. Hawk's accident figure seems a mite low; UK-based aviation consultancy Airclaims Ltd. puts the loss of big jets last year at 23 (see ASW, Jan. 8, 2001). Nevertheless, the hull loss rate is a tiny fraction of all takeoffs - globally, about one loss for every one and a half million flights.

Top of the Heap

But in terms of workplace safety, a rather different picture emerges. Employee injuries, as measured by incidents resulting in lost workdays, place the airline industry at the top of a range of industrial enterprises. For example, the airline industry is about 30 percent worse than the logging industry. For a range of selected industries, the airline industry is it at the top, with a record about four times worse than the average. Companies like DuPont, with well-established safety management systems (SMS) have achieved a phenomenal record. In the airline industry, one official with Transport Canada said, the number of airline employees who fall off platforms and scaffolding is nothing short of amazing.

Pressures may be at work to worsen the situation, according to Dr. Gary Eiff of Purdue University. A leading researcher at the Purdue's Department of Aviation Technology, Eiff said that "increased operational tempos coupled with challenges in providing adequate staffing and equipment have generated environments rich in injury potentials". Eiff's concern was mirrored in a separate presentation at CASS 2001 by Jack Enders.

Hudson pointed to the petroleum industry to make his case for airlines to adopt safety management systems, if not to embrace them enthusiastically. The fatal 1987 explosion and fire of the Piper Alpha offshore rig in the North Sea served as a catalyst for change in the petroleum industry. Hudson served as a consultant during the period since in which Shell International has implemented safety management systems.

Jolting Catalyst for Change

The Piper Alpha disaster, he said, "jolted the European energy industry." Although this rig was not operated by Shell, the company nevertheless was the largest North Sea operator. Piper Alpha had just passed a satisfactory audit by the regulator, yet it still blew. The result was a mandate for all operators to develop comprehensive safety management systems, documented by what Hudson called an associated "safety case." Shell was staring at having to prepare more than 30 safety cases at a projected cost of more than $1.5 million apiece.

Shell officials decided to get in first, to implement the new safety programs to company operations worldwide, and to sell their program to others. They created opportunity out of an impending requirement.

"You build a safety management system on the assumption that you don't have it right, but that you are going to keep making it better," Hudson explained.

Only the highlights of the approach outlined by Hudson are presented here. Briefly, the process centers on an analysis of hazards, known as the Hazards and Effects Management Process, or HEMP. It consists of four core steps: