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Aviation History
1997
1997 - 0083.PDF
MIR SAFETY 1995: it showed that 17 of the 24 accidents, and 11 of the 17 approach/landing accidents, involved airlines based in Third-World or developing countries. The figures confirm Faizi's proposition tiiat any strategy to advance worldwide flight safety will be ineffective unless it can "...take the Third World along". PREACHING TO THE CONVERTED Safety organisations have never deceived them selves about die fact that, by and large, at their conferences they are preaching to the convert ed. They convene each year, however, in the hope that cash-strapped airlines from poor nations will find the personnel and the money to attend. Most do not. Presumably those who attend hope also that safety strategies thrashed out at seminars will reach the non-attenders by some sort of trickle- down effect. The FSF distributes safety mater ial worldwide but acknowledges that, unless the will and the means to make use of it exists, it can not have the desired effect. Faizi points out that 40 nations were repre sented at the Dubai seminar, which sounds impressive, but it means that 140 aviation nations were not present. He observes: "Concepts like crew-resource management and line-oriented flight training, which have become household words in the 'North' are alien to the crews of the 'South'." He adds: "In these countries, it is still the stick-and-rudder skills which determine the efficiency and merit of an airman. What is dis turbing is the fact that they are not even aware diat the world around them has changed and is in a constant state of flux. Establishing a human- factors department or a safety-data processing unit is a cry which has never been heard in this wilderness." The airlines are not the only ones with prob lems. The state of air-traffic-control (ATC) ser vices over most of Africa — a long-standing problem — has just been highlighted dramati cally by the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations (IFALPA) (Flight Inter- natiotml, 27November-3 December, 1996, P6). IFALPA spells out in fine technical detail all the ATC shortcomings over more than three-quar ters of Africa. The pilots were giving formal notice to the world that, because north/south traffic has increased threefold since South Africa shed its apartheid system, unless action is taken, a mid-air collision is just a matter of time. Simple procedural ATC systems—provided that diey are operated properly by appropriate ly trained personnel — are fine until traffic increases beyond dieir limited capacity, they say. In most of Africa, however, procedural ATC is not being operated properly, and the traffic is now getting to the limit of what a procedural system could handle, claim the pilots. Africa's experience is going to be repeated elsewhere as the industry grows, one existing example being large sectors over the former USSR, which now takes international en route traffic in airspace where, in 1989, there was none. Russia and most of the CIS countries have at least admitted that a problem exists and taken the International Air Transport Association (IATA) as their re-equipment consultant. This has placed major demands on LATA, which is a trade association rather than an ATC consul tancy, although it has access to considerable expertise. Finance is difficult for die CIS, and die issues of having to provide for traditionally equipped domestic traffic for many years yet robs the authorities of the simple option of leapfrogging straight for Automatic Dependent Surveillance or other future air-navigation systems solutions. Traffic density in the CIS outside the relatively well-equipped terminal areas, however, has not yet approached the levels that some African routes now face. IFALPA and the International Civil Aviation Organisation have listed as "critically deficient" ATC services in all African states apart from Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia in the north, and Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe in the south. The Association adds that not all the "deficient" states fail to provide every ATC service, but gives a chilling list of general shortcomings, including: • failure to notify defective equipment; • inadequate ATC infrastructure and techni cally sub-standard ATC units; • inadequate communication with aircraft and other ATC centres (ATCCs): • inadequate radar cover: I lack of air-traffic controller/communicator training and competency; • reliance on pilots using die In-flight Broadcast Procedure (IFBP) to arrange their own separation - some pilots do not adhere to the IFBP; I non-mandatory use of transponders. Faizi puts regulatory slackness at the top of his list of Third-World airline-safety problems. Where national budgets are tight, he says, there is a tendency for whoever is head of the nation al airline to be chief also of the regulatory authority, a situation which in Faizi's opinion "...spells disaster". The regulatory authority also normally embodies the investigative authority, which Faizi says should ideally be separated, like die USAs Federal Aviation Administration and its National Transportation Safety Board. As a result of the lack ot functional separation, and also lack of expertise among regulatory author ity staff who are poorly resourced even com pared with airlines, the authority tends to be a rubber-stamping agency, says Faizi. Since the joint appointment is also often a political one, Faizi adds, the aviation chief may well be inappropriately qualified for the role. Frequently, the chief is military or ex-military, which Faizi warns can be bad because of die dif ferent nature of military, compared with busi ness organisation, and of civilian safety culture • "l| till i ii — PAKISTAN INTERNATIONAL Air lines' Capt Amjad Faizi is well placed to speak about the national infrastruc ture inadequacies at the root of the avia tion safety problems which Third World countries face: his own country can lay claim, economically, to be in the Third- World league. His airline, however, has a good safety record, and therefore its management can claim to know what it is like trying to run a safe airline in a nation with tight budgets. So Faizi can get away with describing mercilessly the system faults which a US safety guru would avoid naming for fear of giving offence which could be counter-productive. "What ails the Third World," says Faizi, "can be summed up in a few com monly shared factors." According to Faizi, these include: • slackness of regulatory functions; • inadequate professional training; • non-professional management of airline safety; • mismanagement and severe scarci ty of funds; • ageing fleets. and regulatory enforcement compared with military law. Military enforcement is based on blame and deterrence by punishment. In an air line, this sort of approach produces a culture of secrecy, in which mistakes are covered up instead of examined for future prevention. In poor countries, Faizi points out, the state- owned airlines are seen as providers of hard cur rency, which can be siphoned off by the Government exchequer, leaving the carrier with little capital to invest in quality primary or refresher training. NO IMMEDIATE RESULTS "The best help," says Faizi, "is self-help." Pooling regional training resources would be a start, he says. Since most Third World states could not afford separate regulatory and inves tigative agencies, Faizi suggests that these func tions should be regionalised, giving examples of Africa, South America and South Asia as regions which might profitably consider this. Agencies such as the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the FSFshould earn- out studies to identify the precise corrective action needed, Faizi believes, saying that his examination identifies only die generic nature of third-world aviation problems There is hope for the future, however, says Faizi: "Only recently has the gravity of the situ ation been understood and adequately qualified professionals are being inducted for the perfor mance of regulator ' functions; but such a change will not bring about immediate results. It will be some time before the systems settle down and start producing positive results." • FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 8 - 14 January 1997 29
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