Decisions

 Decisions

By OffRoadPilots

Operational safety decisions in the aviation industry are based on internal or external pressure, social media ratings, customer opinions, or investors demands. Safety has become a fashionable word in the context of airline and airport operations. Conventional wisdom is that regulations are minimum safety standards and justify reasons for more regulations to improve safety. Regulations are neutral and may not by itself compatible with the safe operation of an airport or aircraft. What makes regulations effective is how it allows for operational processes. It wasn’t until the accountability within a safety management system in aviation became a regulatory requirement that airlines and airports could assess their operational processes to conform to regulatory requirements. The airmail act of 1926 is a prime example how promoting new regulations supported efficient and safe air transportation by applying the latest technology to airnavigation and airport improvements. This new regulation required licensing of pilots, aircraft airworthiness and a national airnavigation system. The airnavigation system used the latest technology for visual navigation and placed lighted towers on mountaintop to identify air routes. Some of these towers are still operational today. Making rules and regulations better improves the health of an organization.

Decisions that are made by authorities and whatever method is applied, or whichever direction it is viewed from, every single decision is made by one person only. Committee, or group decisions are virtual realities, since at the end of the day, it is the person with the best vocabulary who convince the others and makes the decision. When a person wins a vote by improving and impressing others, it is done by their vocabulary and not by promises, and at the end, it was only one person who made that decision. The same is true in aviation, for both airlines and airports, that only one person makes decisions. This person may be a person in authority, such as the CEO, President of a company, business owner, customer, or an investor, or the accountable executive, while the responsibility for regulatory compliance still rests with the accountable executive.

There is a significant difference between a decision and a choice. Decision connects to the place of behavior, performance, and consequence, while a choice connects to the place of desired intention, value, and belief. Simplified, decisions are connected to causes, or expected outcomes, and choices are connected to reasons, or emotions. The difference between a justification and a reason in that a justification is objective and a reason is subjective. An SMS enterprise needs to operate with a system where decisions are made to instill behaviors by objective decisions and unbiased justifications.

Decisions are made to improve the health of an SMS enterprise. It widely accepted that a safety management system is a businesslike approach to safety and applying a businesslike approach has become the first step to a successful SMS. When applying a businesslike approach, an optimization approach to the decision making process to improve its health is also needed. An optimized decisionmaking process within an SMS enterprise is a targeted approach to decisions. In marketing a specific audience is targeted based on their prior behaviors, perceived resources, purchase availability e.g. physical or online, and demographic. Marketing optimization is all about reaching goals. It is the process of making adjustments to marketing efforts based on data collected, and it is to make tune-ups using the marketing tools and tactics spelled out in the decision marketing strategy plan to align results with ambitions, or goals and objectives. In marketing the consumer is targeted by a supplier. In aviation safety, for both airlines and airports, and within a safety management system, an optimized decision making approach is a reversal of the marketing process.

In marketing the objective is to move product or services to a customer. In aviation safety, the objective is to move a customer, or personnel, to the product or service. The product is the process design, e.g. SMS cloudbased as opposed to paperformat, and the service is personnel accepting a cloudbased SMS. When marketing a new system, the task is not to enforce a new system, but to make sure the system userfriendly for personnel to use so that they accept a new system. A prerequisite to introduce a new system is to conduct a system analysis, test the system and communicate the reason for its purpose.

It is a myth that aviation safety operates with perfect safety systems that are without flaws and without malfunctioning system. When things go wrong, many fall into the hindsight bias trap and place blame on the person who was in control of the last link. A root cause analysis is a tool to prepare for decisions. The 5-Why root cause analysis process is an acceptable process within the aviation industry. When using the 5-Why method, the first answer to the Why-question establishes the pathway to the root cause. Root cause analyses are generally associated with accidents but should also be applied to other special cause variations.

When deciding what the answer to very first Why-question is, the answer must be an action item without an explanation or reason. When an answer is given with an opinion, the path to the root cause deviates from a fact-finding path to an opinion path. The first answer to an aircraft crash is often why did the aircraft crash. This question opens up for an answer to go in any direction, with the two primary direction is to go in an opinion-based direction, or a fact-finding direction. An answer that the aircraft crashed because the pilot did not follow procedure is an option-based answer. Scientific data does not conclusive assign deviations from procedures to be a prerequisite for accidents. Back in 1998 an aircraft crashed while the crew were completing their emergency procedure checklist. A decision to make a statement of what did not happen is irrelevant to a solution, since other tasks than checklist tasks were conducted. Time did not just stop while the procedure was not done. When the first answer to the question why the aircraft crashed is based on facts, an answer could be that it crashed because touched down outside of the touchdown area.

A hazard to a decision-making process is to fall into to the trap to assign a solution, or reason for the accidents before all facts are known. There is no rush to assign a solution or root cause to an accident. Assigning an incorrect root cause, such as pilot error, is a higher risk than waiting for facts to come in. After an accident a risk analysis is conducted, which is different from a root cause analysis. The purpose of a risk analysis is for an operator, being airline or airport, to justify a decision of their next action after an accident. The five basic actions are to communicate, or to monitor, or to pause operations (up to 48 hours), or to suspend operations (beyond 48 hours), or to cease operations (until a new system is in place). There are times when it is justified to suspend or cease operations until a root cause has been determined. However, cease, suspend, or pause operations after every accident until a root cause is established is without justification.

An operator with a conventional safety system without a systematic approach to safety, operates with a safety decision making processes defined as common sense. Implying that safety is common sense relegates it to those areas that don’t require much thought or close attention. When safety is treated as common sense, aviation safety is making a mindless act. Common sense changes over time, and it is a learned behaviour. When common sense are applied there are opposing views of how to improve aviation safety, which is an uphill struggle for the safety management system.

Common sense in one region might not be common sense in another region. A safety management system may function well in one region of the world, while it has opposing views in other regions. When exactly the same hazards are identified in different regions, decisions to improve safety may vary from one region to another region when applying the accepted safety management system processes. SMS is a human behavior system and acceptable human behaviors vary across regions. It is impossible to impose, or change, human behaviors to conform to one-world acceptable human behavior. Decision-making processes must therefore be based on data collected to improve safety and not common sense approach.

Humans are resilient with the ability to bounce back or adapt. Safety decisions are often made to force adaptability where management finds it necessary to stay in business. Some of these changes are automation and electronics. Aircraft systems are very different today from what they were just a few years ago. Pilots have become automation monitoring experts rather than pilots, operational managers, and aerodynamics experts. 

Transferring aircraft operational control from pilots to automation does not improve safety in aviation, but moves human-errors into automation as written in this 2013 post:” If automation replaces humans in critical stages of a process, the human-error factor is not eliminated, but transferred into an automation package.” Cabin crew automation may not be as obvious as for pilots, but cabin crews have become social media influencers for their organization to maintain a highest possible rating.

Decisions are necessary to maintain an acceptable level of safety in aviation. Policy, process, procedure, or acceptable work practices decisions do not necessarily improve safety. Decisions might be perceived as safety improvements, which is the purpose of operating a business, and this is not necessarily a hazard for the safe operations of aircraft or airport. Decision-making processes become hazardous to aviation when its outputs are accepted at face value and blue-stamped as an acceptable change without support of a system analysis. Operational risk analyses and decision-making reliability are judgements decisions to be made within a  highly constraint time limit, but are just as much part of a defined decision-making process as decisions made in the office.

OffRoadPilots