Brave New World

I Have Seen the Future, and It Will Be Closely Monitored

- Sam Weigel

I had a few friends go to work in the chief-pilot office at my last airline, and they claimed that 5 percent of the pilot group created 95 percent of the problems. I’m pretty sure that’s true clear across the aviation industry, and likely within general aviation as well. My key to flying under the radar is to stay diligent, to keep my screw-ups small — and, when I do mess up, to readily confess and demonstrate that I’ve learned from it.

For most non airline pilots, “fessing up” might include filing a report through the NASA-administered Aviation Safety Reporting System. ASRS gives participating pilots a “get-out-of-jail-free card” for most unintentional mistakes, and in exchange, gives the FAA insight into GA pilots’ problem areas. Ultimately, it allows them to design a better system for us to operate within.

At the airlines, we have a similar but more robust system called the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP). Pilots who disclose honest mistakes within a reasonable time frame are protected from career-threatening FAA certificate action. A panel composed of an airline safety specialist, an FAA inspector and a pilot-union representative considers each de-identified case and has fairly broad powers to require safety improvements, including corrective training for the reporting pilots. It also has the power to exclude a report if it decides the crew willfully disobeyed procedures or regulations, and the FAA can still pursue certificate action if it’s not a sole-source event (e.g., if the FAA already knew about the incident from ATC records or eyewitnesses). However, the fact that the program requires pilot-union cooperation generally keeps all parties acting in good faith, with a few highly publicized exceptions that were quickly rectified.