Catching Up

It has been nearly six months since I posted last, thanks in large part to the overwhelming volume of work I've had bearing down on me as a result of my research, etc. Now seems like as good of a time as any to discuss some of the interesting developments in my world.

The aviation injury project stands at about 1900 cases total- including those cases for which I only have partial data- and I've made it through a good number of those especially considering that I do not get paid for my time and efforts. This month also marks the end of the project being conducted under the auspices of Saginaw Valley State University and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the faculty, administration and staff for their unwavering and enthusiastic support of my research. I am forever in their debt. The project will be transferring to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University when I transfer as a student as of October roughly if everything transitions smoothly. At least that's the plan at the moment....as anyone in academia is aware, plans are always subject to change.

Sadly, the slowly increasing death toll in aircraft crashes has come to include another friend of mine as a result of a crash a couple of weeks ago in West Virginia. William Huff- a great guy and a competent pilot who flew out of the airport across the road from Gina and I's apartment- died after he was apparently incapacitated either by hypoxia or, less likely, some form of a medical event. While deaths like his are not something my research is geared towards preventing, the loss of someone I know yet again reminds me why I do the work I do. Fair winds and clear skies my friend, you're cleared to land.

The past few months have been punctuated by a lot of cases like this- tragic deaths, sometimes avoidable. The loss of the Dash 8 in Buffalo and the crash of the Air France Airbus triggered a lot of talk in the media about how the crash rate has spiked and what does this mean. As someone who spends a considerable amount of time wading through statistics and such, I would like to point out that while this appears to be a "bad year" if one pays attention to the media that it really has not been markedly worse than last year in terms of the number of lives lost. The fact that we have seen a handful of commercial crashes in a short time is not in and of itself indicative of a larger problem as some of the news agency have tried to imply, directly or indirectly. Like so many things in this country, the media grabs hold of something like a terrier with a rat and shakes the crap out of it until it gets bored and moves on. We went a couple of years without losing a schedule commercial flight- before the Buffalo crash, there had not been a Part 121 crash (Part 121 refers to the section of the federal regulations pertaining to airline operations) since the loss of Comair 5191 at Lexington, Kentucky on August 27, 2006. That is a record that is enviable but at the same time, the absence of crashes actually 'primed' the nation to see the loss of the Colgan Air Dash 8 in a different light than the same crash would have been seen in the late 1980s or early 1990s when crashes were more commonplace. It seemed all the more shocking and unexpected because of the 'out of the blue' nature since we had not heard about crashes for quite some time.

That said, the problem is that while we strive to have a perfect record we are going to fall short inevitably. Planes will continue to crash despite our best efforts and people will continue to die in those crashes. That is simply the risk you take getting on an aircraft, just as you risk dying in a car accident every time you get behind the wheel. This fact often disheartens people and I have seen several would-be colleagues (all young and very talented researchers) decide against assisting with my research because of this. It is quite easy to look at the loss of several hundred people a year and either dismiss it as not worth the trouble- it's a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of thousands killed annually in car accidents- or insurmountable as Everest in winter. However, a concerted effort- in which I hope to play some role- can bring those numbers down and allow more people to go home to their families in something other than a casket.

In a first for my blog, I would like to take a couple of moments and comment on something related to my research but at the same time separate from it that I have not touched on before. It's the "human side" of crashes, the emotional aspects of the crash and the often lifelong effects on those who survive, the families of the victims and the responders. While not all crashes are part of my research (and even if they were, I could not divulge which ones are and which ones are not even if I wanted to), there are some crashes that I feel are often forgotten as simply footnotes in the annals of history. The thing is that is a disservice to every person who died, every person who suffered and those who loved those involved.

We in the aviation safety community try to learn what we can from each crash and then pass that knowledge along to the pilots, the companies and the industry as a whole to avoid repeating the same mistakes again. As the saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Perhaps the lessons learned and the lives saved by those lessons and their application should be considered the best memorial possible for lives shattered by tragedy, as at least those deaths were not in vain. Cold comfort to those who will never hold a loved one again and feel the warmth of their embrace, but at least it is something to cling to in trying times.

Memorials in the more traditional sense- tangible, permanent structures of glass, marble, granite, and bronze- are often what people think of when the phrase "paying tribute" is brought up. I can not say I disagree with this. I have gone and lain flowers on monuments for two or three crashes when I realized I was in the area on business or personal trips over the years to pay tribute to those lost despite having never known anyone on board the aircraft. It just seems like the decent thing to do given what I spend a large part of my free time doing.

Yet, one thing that sticks with me is that many of the truly watershed moments of darkness in aviation history have never had this level of respect given to them. One such example is the crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 401 in the Everglades on the night of 29. December 1972. 103 people lost their lives in what was the first crash of a wide-body commercial airliner. It is considered one of the classic case studies in crew resource management (CRM, also called "cockpit resource management" by some) due to a minor technical glitch and the breakdown of situational awareness as the crew sought a solution to the issue. It is a perfect example of how crashes are often not simple events but the end result of a multitude of small issues that compounded to bring the aircraft down. In this case, the aircraft descended unnoticed until just before impacting the pitch blackness of the Everglades west of Miami. Despite the fact that the crash occurred nearly eight years to the day before I was born, it has always held a special place in my mind because it was one of the first cases I looked into when I became interested in aviation safety.

There is a blog much like this one put together by a group of survivors of the crash and other like-minded individuals who are working to not let the memory of that night fade like it has for so many other crashes. The blog can be found at: http://ealflt401.blogspot.com/

I recommend that anyone reading this blog donate money to the cause of erecting a memorial to the lives lost and those left behind and the heroes of that night. If you absolutely feel the need to have something to show for your donation, the tribute group sells baseball caps and tote bags to help raise money (I have yet to do so, but it is my intention to purchase one of the caps myself). Not only is it a decent thing to do to remember those who have died tragically but all of us who fly with any degree of regularity would be well advised to remember that out of this case came many changes in how aircraft are operated that play major roles in explaining we do not lose aircraft as regularly as we used to. Your own life may have been saved without your ever realizing it because of the loss of this flight and what was learned from it. At very least, keep the victims and their families in your thoughts and prayers.