On July 6, Samsung Executive and Asiana Airlines passenger David Eun posted a photo via Twitter, saying “I just crash landed at SFO. Most everyone seems fine. I’m OK. Surreal…”
Within seconds, horrified witness reports were being posted and shared on Twitter and other social media, reporters online kicked into gear finding out info about the airline and the flight. About 20-30 minutes later, TV began reporting on the event, cautiously taking much of their information from the social media reports. This event, like many other recent events, demonstrates how breaking news now occurs in the age of ubiquitous camera phones and social media.
Kudos to an industry that until this past weekend had logged only one commercial fatality since 2001. Sadly, two young Chinese students perished in this crash and dozens of other passengers sustained injuries, some quite serious and potentially life-changing. Nevertheless, it was remarkable that so many people survived this crash. Among other observations, one theme on social media was “hug an engineer today” in appreciation for their contributions to improving air travel safety.
Safety Officer first and foremost
One of the noteworthy stories that emerged was that of Lee Yoon-hye, the flight attendant who was last off the plane. You can read a story of her initial reports of the evacuation. Despite the ordeal, she was so composed that reporters did not realize she had been on the plane, they thought she was stationed as airport staff. She proceeded to do a press conference (in Korean, but just click to marvel at her composure) and only later at the hospital did she realize she had broken her tailbone. (See also: Harrowing tales of rescue after crash of Asiana Flight 214.)
In pop culture over the years, the job of the flight attendant has often been portrayed as a glorified cocktail server — and because flights are generally so safe, it’s easy to forget what the main responsibilities of the flight attendant are: first and foremost, safety, and when required, emergency response. Attendants undergo rigorous safety training which includes emergency passenger evacuation management, use of evacuation slides/life rafts, in-flight firefighting, survival in the jungle, sea, desert, ice, first aid, CPR, defibrillation, ditching/emergency landing procedures, decompression emergencies, Crew Resource Management and security. They are also often required to speak several languages because they have to communicate with international travelers.
Lessons to be learned
The National Transportation Safety Board was on the scene very quickly, beginning a thorough investigation and analysis of exactly what happened and why. This is expected to take some time, although happily enough, NTSB has an advantage in the number of on-the-scene witnesses and staff. All too often they are piecing fragments together and the staff reports are from a recovered black box. You can watch the NTSB’s most recent public report from Wednesday.
The evacuation standard for getting off a plane in an emergency is within 90 seconds – something that seems incredible if you stop and think how long it can take to deplane under normal circumstances, never mind in the midst of chaos and turmoil in a crash scene and fire. The recent NTSB reports are now saying that the orders to evacuate didn’t come until 90 seconds after landing – the pilots originally told passengers to stay in their seats. Perhaps pilots may have been waiting for rescue vehicles to get to the plane, it’s unclear. But when fire was spotted 90 seconds in, evacuation ensued. It’s easy to second guess decisions but it is up to the NTSB to gather more facts and determine what happened.
Lee’s exceptional safety training kicked in to gear on that Saturday crash and she saved lives. Think of her next time you shrug off the safety drill at the start of your next flight. More importantly, think of your organization’s emergency response plan. How ready would your organization be should an unexpected event occur. Could you evacuate the premises in 90 seconds or less? Do you have an assigned emergency response team or assigned safety staff? Fred Hosier offers 7 safety lessons any workers can take from SF plane crash at Safety News Alert – a excellent rundown of take-aways for any employer in any industry. As the NTSB report progresses, there will no doubt be other lessons in safety, planning, and emergency response – lessons for both for the airline industry and other businesses a well.
See also: Emergency Response Plans & Resources for Businesses
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Posts Tagged ‘air safety’
Do you have a 90-second plan for your organization?
Thursday, July 11th, 2013Commercial drivers & medical certification (and other alarming commercial transportation safety matters)
Thursday, October 7th, 2010On Mother’s Day in 1999, Custom Bus Charters’ bus driver Frank Bedell veered off a highway near New Orleans, killing 22 passengers and injuring 20 others. Just 10 hours before this trip, Bedell was treated at a local hospital for “nausea and weakness.” He had been treated at least 20 times in the 21 months prior to the accident, and 10 of those times involved hospitalization for “life-threatening” heart and kidney disease. You can read more about this horrific crash, which remains one of the nation’s deadliest bus crashes, at NOLA.com: Loopholes let sick man drive, safety board says. Also of interest: Breaking the law went with the job.
This accident brought the issue of the medical competence of commercial drivers to the public attention in a dramatic way. In its subsequent report of the accident after the investigation, The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that “…the probable cause of this accident was the driver’s incapacitation due to his severe medical conditions and the failure of the medical certification process to detect and remove the driver from service. Other factors that may have had a role in the accident were the driver’s fatigue and the driver’s use of marijuana and a sedating antihistamine.
The incident and investigation prompted NTSB to issue Safety Recommendations revolving around medical certification of commercial drivers.
How are we doing today?
Nearly a decade later, how are these safety measures designed to protect the public from medically unsafe commercial drivers working out? Not too well, according to a recent investigative report by News21, which was published by MSNBC in the article Truckers fit to drive — if a chiropractor says so: “From 2002, when the recommendations were made, through 2008, the last year for which data is available, there were at least 826 fatal crashes involving medically unqualified or fatigued drivers, according to a News21 analysis of the FMCSA Crash Statistics database.”
The article paints a scary portrait of a driver medical certification program that is pretty broken. Truck drivers can pop into roadside clinics to pick up certifications issued after a cursory examination by almost any health professional. And that’s a good scenario – drivers can also download online certificates and fill them out themselves or ignore the requirement entirely. Forgeries are a common occurrence. Being caught without a certificate might result in a slap-on-the-wrist fine. While there have been calls for a national registry for medical certification of commercial drivers, the idea has made little progress. It will probably take the next big incident to ignite public outrage to motivate any change.
For a resource on current regulations, see the US Department of Transportation Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Medical Programs, which includes medical regulations and notices, including drug and alcohol testing.
The News21 story on commercial drivers is the third part in a series of four articles that deal with transportation and public safety. Here are the others:
Part 1: Driving While Tired: Safety officials are slow to react to operator fatigue:
“NTSB does not track fatigue-related highway accidents on a regular basis. But in 1993, the board commissioned a study expecting to learn about the effects of drugs and alcohol on trucking accidents. Investigators studied all heavy-trucking accidents that year and made an unexpected discovery: Fatigue turned out to be the bigger problem. NTSB Crash investigators said driver fatigue played a key role in a bus accident in Utah in 2008 that killed nine people returning from a ski trip.
The study found 3,311 heavy truck accidents killed 3,783 people that year, and between 30 percent and 40 percent of those accidents were fatigue-related.”
Part 2: Video in the cockpit: Privacy vs. safety
In 200, the NTSB added a recommendation for video recorders to be installed in commercial and charter planes to its “most wanted” list. Pilot unions and other groups have lobbied this safety measure. See this story’s sidebar article: Shhhh! Your pilot is napping
Part 4: Outsourcing safety: Airplane repairs move to unregulated foreign shops
“More maintenance has moved overseas. Airlines are not required to use regulated repair shops. Foreign repair stations can go five years between inspections, and even then are often tipped off that inspectors are coming. Manuals are in English, but not all the workers read English. Drug tests of workers are illegal in some countries.
A News21 analysis of Federal Aviation Administration data showed that about 15,000 accidents or safety incidents in all aviation travel can be attributed at least in part to inferior maintenance or repairs since 1973, when the FAA started keeping such records. In these accidents at least 2,500 people died and 4,200 were injured.”
Most wanted list: transportation safety improvements
The NTSB keeps a most wanted list of transportation safety improvements, in which it makes recommendations for critical safety improvements for various transportation sectors. Recommendations are designed to improve public safety and save lives, but many have been on the list for years. In some cases, individual states may have requirements, but these recommendations are national in scope. While issues on the “most wanted list” are pending, individual employers might use the list as best practice guidance for safety programs to limit exposure both for workers compensation and other liability issues that might arise from commercial transportation accidents.
You can find more reports on transportation and public safety at News21, “a national initiative led by 12 of America’s leading research universities with the support of two major foundations” with a purpose of furthering in-depth and investigative reporting. In 2010, one of the main areas of focus has been Breakdown: Traveling Dangerously in America.
David Warren and the Little Black Box
Monday, July 26th, 2010David Warren died last week in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. He was 85. You may never have heard of this aeronautical researcher, but his work has impacted anyone who travels by air. David Warren is credited with the invention of the black box. (A splendid obituary by Douglas Martin in the New York Times can be found here.)
In 1934, when Warren was just 8 years old, his father died in a plane crash. His last gift to his son was a ham radio set. After earning a PhD in chemistry from the Imperial College in London, Warren went to work for the Australian defense department, where he investigated a spate of civilian air crashes.
Thinking like a good risk manager, he recognized the need for better data at the time of the crash. He volunteered to work on developing a flight recorder system. His bosses were not impressed. One went so far as to say: “If I find you talking to anyone, including me, about this matter, I will have to sack you.”
His peers went on to note that if his idea had any merit, the Americans would have already made it (!). Preserving pilot conversations would yield “more expletives than explanations.” (The pilots, naturally, did not like the idea of a permanent record of their chatter.) It was only a visit by a high ranking British aviation official in 1958 that triggered a positive response. Warren was flown to England to show off his little black box (which, for the record, was and remains red or orange). The rest, as they say, is history – a history that has significantly enhanced our ability to understand exactly why a given plane went down.
Obscurity and Fame
We live in an age of instant (unmerited) celebrity: you can become rich and famous for doing absolutely nothing (did someone say Snooki???). The quiet Australian David Warren accomplished a great deal in his long life and managed to stay in the background. He was able to transform the painful loss of his father into safer skies for everyone. It will not surprise you that he never profited from his work. Even if his government had offered him all the profits from his invention, he says he would have refused. He quipped that if he were to profit from his good idea, he might also get billed for the ones that amounted to nothing.
The latest generation of black boxes are self-ejecting, encased in steel and insulated against fire. They provide more than 200 measurements and dump data 128 times a second. These technical wonders have their origins in the mind of young child tinkering with a radio set and dreaming of a father who never came home. We should all be grateful for the exemplary life of this humble man.
