Confessions of a Flight Safety Officer

Mobility Forum, Jul/Aug 2004 by Wahler, Mike

Third, you are not too busy to serve on a board. A SIB could be the most important task you accomplish in your career. In the worst case scenario, you could be determining what started a chain of events that caused somebody's death. Hopefully, you can discover the cause so nobody else loses his life. If you're lucky, you are investigating a mishap that was not fatal, but if you can discover the root cause, the Air Force can apply your recommendations to prevent future occurrences of the mishap and prevent loss of life and property. This may be the only time in your career that you have the opportunity to improve the way an entire weapons system performs the mission. If you are successful in the investigation, you can potentially save lives, including your own.

Fourth, if you are 100% positive you have discovered the cause on the first day, you are most likely incorrect. Never has my first guess been correct, regardless of how convinced I was I knew the answer. Once you know what happened, do everything you can to disprove your theory. If you can't, you most likely have found the root cause.

Fifth, every mishap is preventable. I have yet to see a mishap that could not have been prevented. The first board I was part of discovered a problem that had been ongoing for years in the KC-10 fleet. This was just the first time it caused enough damage to warrant a safety investigation. When you're out there doing your job, make sure to report the little things. The AMC Form 97 is not just for mishaps, but all unusual occurrences. Take the time to report the seemingly insignificant unusual occurrences. Your local safety office in conjunction with HQ AMC/SEF may be able to use the information and prevent a mishap.

Sixth, serving on a board is incredibly educational. When you dig through the raw destruction that occurs when something goes wrong with an aircraft, you learn more than you ever could in a simulator or flying a local training mission. Every mishap I investigated influenced the way I perform my duties as a pilot. I have altered my walk around, changed my crew brief, and changed the way I perform practice emergency separations. You can do the same even without being on a board. Read safety reports when you get a chance, especially the ones involving your airframe. Take the time to learn from them and make your sorties safer.

Seventh, there are people out there a lot more knowledgeable about my aircraft than I am. The Air Force has a lot of extremely smart and well educated people working for us, and so do our aircraft manufacturers. If you have a question, search them out and ask it. You don't have to be investigating a mishap to benefit from their expertise. Your wing safety office is a good place to start. It's much more pleasant to ask the question now, and you may have just saved yourself from having a mishap.

Eighth, the Air Force is serious about safety. Every board I served on got what we needed when we needed it. We never had budget concerns, nor were we ever denied anything we required. When there is major damage to an Air Force asset, or worse yet, loss of life, our leadership will do anything within their power to prevent it from happening again. If it takes time for fixes to be implemented, it's because the board or leadership is ensuring they are the right fixes.