North to Alaska: An ORM Story

Mobility Forum, Jul/Aug 2005 by Ginn, Jason

Captain Matt Carpenter pored over the maps and charts in front of him - and was worried. The scheduler had just placed him as copilot on a high priority mission to Alaska. It was leaving in 16 hours. He had run to the planning room, hoping to get some quick study in before the aircraft commander arrived. But as he reviewed aspects of the mission, things didn't add up. This mission seemed unsafe.

What should Captain Carpenter do now? Keep it to himself and push the mission? How about telling his Operations Officer (DO)? What will he say? Will he tell Matt, "Quit whining! Push the mission!" Or will Matt and the DO further analyze the mission and attempt to reduce the risks?

I'm going to tell you how the third situation occurred in the 14th Airlift Squadron. A scenario in which a crew brought up a hazardous mission to the squadron leadership, and together they worked to reduce the risk.

You guessed it; this scenario involves Operational Risk Management (ORM). But wait, before you put down this article because it's just another hokey ORM story-read on, this one is true...it really happened. And remember, ORM is not just another Air Force acronym or useless program. ORM is a common sense approach to risk analysis; a tool that works-I'll show you.

Let's start by reviewing the six ORM steps:

1) Identify the hazards,

2) Assess the risks,

3) Analyze risk control measures,

4) Make control decisions,

5) Implement risk controls, and

6) Supervise and review.

In summary, before performing some action, ask yourself, "What are the bad things that could happen?" Are there ways to eliminate or reduce the bad things? Then follow through and implement. Let's see how ORM helped Matt Carpenter and his crew.

The mission entailed transporting ballistic missile defense equipment from Alabama to Alien Army Airfield in Alaska. Matt executed textbook mission planning. He checked the airfield operations, layout and restrictions, airfield Notices to Airmen (NOTAM), weather for arrival and departure, etc. While analyzing this data, Matt noticed that a lot of things did not look quite right:

1) Two of the three runways were closed.

2) The airfield had no radar control or operational tower to help monitor aircraft position and deconflict with other aircraft.

3) The airfield only had a non-precision approach (lowest compatible weather minimums of 500 1-1/2) to one of the closed runways, demanding a circling approach (an approach in which one flies an instrument approach to one runway and then visually maneuvers to land on another once below the clouds).

4) The airfield had no anti-ice or deice capability. As it was Alaska in the winter, the weather was forecast to be 200ft ceilings and 1/2-mile visibility with snow and ice. To top it off, the airfield was surrounded by mountainous terrain.

Matt sat back in his chair, deeply concerned. One or two of these factors could be overcome; but all together, they made him feel down right uncomfortable. This young man just performed step 1 in the ORM process-identify the hazards. As a result, he took his concerns to the squadron's assistant director of operations (ADO) and the DO. With their more experienced set of eyes, they saw a more deadly hazard awaiting this crew-controlled flight into terrain (CFIT). The lack of radar control and ATC, circling approach, weather and mountainous terrain can combine to put an unsuspecting crew into a hillside. Controlled flight into terrain has been the cause of many aircraft mishaps, such as an American Airlines 757 near Cali, Columbia; an Air Force T-43 near Dubrovnic, Croatia (carrying then Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown); and a C-130 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. With this knowledge they began to assess the risk (ORM step 2). The ADO and DO used a combination of Charleston's mission risk management and Flight Safety Foundation's CFIT (http://www. flightsafety.org/pdf/cfit_check.pdf) checklists. Both of these checklists use numerical systems to quantify mission parameters to enable crews to analyze and evaluate risk. The resulting outcome did not bode well for the mission; the risk was high on both counts.

These process worksheets highlighted issues that needed to be resolved. The crew needed to find a means to eliminate, or reduce to an acceptable level, the hazards of this mission; hence, reduce the risk (ORM step 3). They needed to determine which elements could be controlled or altered and use that to improve the situation. The runway closures, lack of radar and ground control, lack of deice and anti-ice, and mountainous terrain were all factors the crew could not control. What about other mission aspects? Could they fly to another airfield and truck the cargo in? No. Could they transport deicing equipment with them? No. The ADO and DO reviewed the situation and determined three things they could alter (ORM step 4). The first was an easy step for the DO, increase the experience level of the crew; this would help the crew better cope with the adverse and difficult situation and environment. For instance, the current aircraft commander had less than 100 hours in command, so the DO had the schedulers add a heavily experienced instructor pilot to the crew.