October 2008 Archives

The UK coroner's report on the deaths of ten RAF servicemen in a Lockheed Martin C-130K Hercules XV179 over Iraq in January 2005 has confirmed that they died as a result of "serious systemic failures" by the Ministry of Defence.

Ground fire, including small arms fire, caused a fuel tank explosion that blew off the outboard 7m of the starboard wing.

At the end of last year the RAF Board of Inquiry published a report that looked into all the issues surrounding the event, and it contained this bland statement of what the crew faced:

"The Board concluded that the aircraft only flew for 12-15 sec after the explosion, which strongly implies the crew had little, if any, control over the aircraft, and no time for anything other than an instinctive piloting reaction."

It stated the crash occurred partly because the wing tanks were not protected from explosion by an inerting system (since then the fleet has been protected thus), but also because the crew was flying low in daylight and they had not been provided with the latest available intelligence about where enemy deployments could be expected.

The coroner's report has mostly served to confirm points recognised by the Board. The coroner said:

"Very sadly I don't think this inquest can determine [that] if [fuel tank inerting] had been fitted the ten who died would have survived the attack. What it can determine is that the explosion that led to the wing breaking in two would not have occurred, because there would have been no explosion. The ten who died had just lost their opportunity for survival."

In other words, the aircraft's track had been anticipated by the enemy, the crew had not been given the information to avoid them, and even if the fuel tank had not been ignited by that particular projectile, within the next few minutes plenty more stuff would have been thrown at them, and they might not have survived it.

Not long after this attack I attended the LXX Squadron 90th anniversary celebration at the RAF's main Hercules base, RAF Lyneham, and wrote about it. As usual with military men, the subject of the loss was discussed briefly, but then it was back to the party.  

That headline may sound patronising, but it's not intended to be.

Flying helicopters is difficult. The tasks they are asked to perform are those which no other transport mode could carry out. Helicopters are so expensive to operate they are only called out when nothing else can do the job.

The Morecambe Bay report is one of the first serious accident reports to be published since the International Helicopter Safety Seminar (IHSS) was held in Montreal in 2005, and it is certainly the first to recognise the significance of the strategies for the future of global helicopter safety that emerged from that seminal meeting.

The UK Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) report confirms that the IHSS's offshoot, the Joint Helicopter Safety Analysis Team (JHSAT), got it right when it said that most helicopter accidents are caused by "pilot judgement and actions", because this one certainly was. But thankfully the report doesn't blame the pilots. It asks why helicopter pilots make the mistakes they do.

It's simple, stoopid! Let's revert to the first paragraph in this blog: "Flying helicopters is difficult. The tasks they are asked to perform are those which no other transport mode could carry out. They are so expensive to operate they are only called out when nothing else can do the job."

And has the helicopter industry really looked at this issue, or just assumed that unsatisfactory global helicopter accident rates that have failed to improve even slightly over more than 20y were just an immutable law of nature? Well, that's the way it has been until now.

That assumption remained unchallenged until the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST), the JHSAT, and now the AAIB, came on board. Now the helicopter operating industry is being encouraged to change old attitudes.

The crewmen who died in Morecambe Bay were good pilots, but they hadn't been comprehensively trained for their job. They had been trained according to existing regulations and existing practices by their employer, CHC, which is the world's biggest helicopter operator and which has, by global industry standards, a superb safety record. But, although this crew could have been prepared on a flight simulator for the demands they faced that night, they had not been. It was not a requirement.

It's the accepted practices, accepted cultures, and existing regulations about helicopter operations that need to be radically reviewed. Thankfully, the IHST, the JHSAT, and now the AAIB, are finally questioning them. 

Sorry to go on about what Flybe has been doing recently, but actually it's important to the UK airline industry, and other European carriers could learn a trick or two as well.

Europe's largest regional carrier has just finished training 21 cabin crew, and the airline has won recognition under the UK's national vocational qualifications system for the professional skills they have learned.

So what?

Surely that makes their skills transferable to other carriers who then wouldn't have to train them except in type differences?

Yup!

It doesn't seem to bother Flybe that Ryanair's Michael O'Leary, who requires his cabin crew to pay for their own training and uniforms, might see this as a gift.

Flybe's director of safety, quality and training Simon Witts says it's good for cabin crew morale to have their professional skills recognised and increases their pride in what they do. If he's right, I don't see many of them jumping ship to a carrier with a somewhat different relationship with its onboard crews.

Good cabin crew need a wide array of skills: first class communication for everything from customer care to emergency drills; the use of emergency equipment; first aid skills to levels close to those required of a paramedic; managing onboard equipment from firefighting kit to portable oxygen units; health and safety practises in an aircraft environment; security procedures; hygeine; and finally customer service and the galley.

Meanwhile Flybe is taking on engineering apprentices who will, after their time at college and working in the airline's hangars, start at about £30,000 a year as 21-year-old licensed aircraft engineers. Before the LAE was just a licence, if a respected one. This course will be modular with academic recognition for professional skills gained.

It's much the same, at present, to have a pilot licence. The licence is respected, but the skills and knowledge gained in order to obtain one are not recognised in the UK as academic or professional modules, or even collectively as a degree, or a degree equivalent. The learning list is longer than that for cabin crew: the rules of the air; aerodynamics; aircraft systems; aircraft engines; navigation; aviation meteorology; radio telephony; air traffic control, crew resource management, and the effects of the aviation environment on human physiology. And all of those require an underlying good general education, especially in the sciences.

At present, institutions like London's City University run specialist courses like a BSc in Air Transport Operations, which bolts a pilot licence onto a degree course, preparing a student well for a career as a management pilot.

Meanwhile the learning and skills components of the pilot licence courses taken at flight training organisations are not, at present, recognised as transferable skills. Flybe's Witts says the company is looking at the possibility of changing this situation, maybe as it works with Flight Training Europe and the Civil Aviation Authority to construct the UK's first multic-crew pilot licence (MPL) course starting in February. Flybe has already been designated a qualifications awarding body, so it could bring in some seriously positive changes for the way in which pilot qualifications are gained and viewed. 

It was at Heathrow Airport that I had a screwdriver confiscated.

Okay, you might reasonably say.

Unless you knew it was one of those minute devices for tightening the tiny hinge screws in a pair of reading spectacles. It was exactly an inch (24mm) long, plastic-handled, and the metal part measured about a quarter of an inch.

The confiscated screwdriver was smaller than this one.

I remonstrated cheerfully with the security staff about what kind of threat I could constitute, armed with this tiny instrument. The response was equally cheerful but resigned: screwdrivers not permitted.

It was summarily dumped into the box containing a mass of pretty harmless domestic items.

Being a front-line airport security team member cannot be much fun. You are as much loved by your "victims" as a traffic warden, and you know it - and frequently get told it. The job is repetitive, poorly paid, and operatives are given no credit for having any intelligence.

If they were credited with intelligence they would, during their training, be provided with sufficient knowledge to enable them to use their discretion as to whether a device could realistically be used to create a threat - or even a nuisance - on an aircraft.

Being treated as if you have no intelligence gives you no incentive to act intelligently. In fact it gives you no incentive to do your job. I had taken the same screwdriver through Heathrow and other airports countless times before somebody saw it. Does that represent a failure of security? Answers on a postcard, please (or click to respond to this blog).

When they nicked the screwdriver, here's what they missed: dental floss (for garotting cabin crew); laptop power cable (same purpose); slender metal ball-point pen (as good as a screwdriver for threatening people).

And, of course, the passenger encounters the ultimate proof of what a charade the overall security policy for airports is once he/she gets airside. You can buy a large glass bottle of duty-free liquor to carry with you. Large glass bottles, as members of street gangs know, when broken are truly fearsome weapons.

But who cares about that threat to the cabin crew and other passengers?

The duplicity of the policymaking government departments who know this full well is absolutely breathtaking. But somehow they remain completely unaccountable.