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© Sipa Press/Rex Features
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During the past eight years, the system of counting airline accidents annually has ceased to be a useful predictor of future safety because nothing significant has happened to the numbers. A projection would show more of the same.
However, that is to ignore stresses that have been building in the industry gradually during the past two or three decades and which, if not mitigated, will lead to a world where airlines from mature economies face a return to accident numbers - if not rates - experienced in the 1970s and 1980s. This would be a shock for passengers as air travel in the developed world has become routine in people's minds, and safety has stopped being a consideration for those who purchase airline tickets.
Meanwhile, all predictions for air transport demand are for solid growth. Indeed air travel demand, despite the dire economic situation in mature Western economies, remains fairly buoyant. But this continual expansion has been unaccompanied by industry investment in specialist training, creating the single biggest source of stress the system faces: a shortage of pilots, maintenance engineers and instructors for both specialisations. Combine this with continued pressure on airline profits caused by excess capacity, plus high oil prices, and something has to give.
In the past 20 years, almost all the business, technical and operational ground rules governing commercial aviation have radically altered, forced by market changes, air traffic management, navigation, and aircraft and avionic technology. Logically, these demand a change in training - but that change has not been delivered. What has most affected pilots is the influence of low-cost carriers, bringing radical change to many airline relationships with flightcrew. But what has most changed crew recruiting and management is the decline of the military as a pilot skills provider.
Meanwhile, there has been a loss of pilot exposure to anything other than pre-packaged flight planning, followed by automated flight on the line. In unusual circumstances - non-standard or not automated - a lack of pilot resilience has led to fatal loss of control (LOC) accidents, making LOC the biggest killer category this century - taking over from controlled flight into terrain in the last.
This is acknowledged by industry bodies such as IATA and the International Civil Aviation Organisation, and their respective training and qualification initiatives. So carriers cannot say they have not been warned, but these efforts have not been translating into action. Just as a reminder, the number of fatalities caused by airline accidents in the 1980s was about 1,100 a year, whereas numbers now are less than 800 a year, despite revenue-passenger kilometres being three times larger. The industry could revert to the bad old days, but for a different reason: the aircraft are better, but the skills to operate them are degrading.
SECURITY
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
The modernisation of passenger security checks has been promised and improved technologies are in active development, but there is no sign of delivery in the next 12 months.
Indeed, there is a risk the current economic situation will reduce the willingness of government agencies, airports and airlines to invest, pushing improvements further into the future.
The vision of the future may vary according to which security equipment company is describing it, but would involve a passenger walking down a short aisle in which he or she would present a microchipped passport for automatic scanning, while simultaneously undergoing unobtrusive explosive scanning and biometric identification by facial profiling.
Meanwhile, hand baggage would be fully checked without the need to open it or separate items within it. Finally, if everything tallied, the barrier would drop, allowing the passenger through to airside.
The UK government proposes to replace its "direct and inspect" approach with what it calls an outcome-focused, risk-based approach. The aim is for the aviation industry "to design security processes that deliver specified security outcomes rather than having to follow detailed rules", says the UK Department for Transport.
In the USA, the Transportation Security Agency is pilot testing a new behavioural profiling programme at Boston Logan airport, under which TSA officers are trained to "engage in conversations with passengers to verify or dispel suspicious behaviour and anomalies", says the TSA.
All the activity and ideas are certainly a sign of a wish to modernise, but the delivery is not in sight.