We started this year with a series of tragic accidents and a very high focus on safety within our community. We also received a great deal of media attention, some of it positive and some negative.
When I began to write this article, my intent was to talk about where we may be in the “complacency cycle” discussed by Rob Cavalier in his paper of the same name. I thought that, since it had been almost seven months since we had experienced a serious accident, we may be at the bottom of the complacency curve, the point at which we tend to get comfortable with what we are doing. People may start taking shortcuts on procedures, may begin pushing weather and performance limitations, may start feeling invulnerable. Rob listed several indicators in his paper, all of which are worthy of review. (His article can be seen on the NEMSPA Web site by clicking on the Airnet link for April 2005.) My question is: Where are you in the complacency cycle?
The place we need to be is at the top of the cycle. We need to continue to focus on how we do things, regardless of the attention we receive from our managers, the media, or our peers. That is to say, we need to continue to be vigilant for those small, subtle changes in our own attitudes and performance that may start us on the slope to the bottom of the cycle. We need to maintain the discipline it takes to check on things that we know are OK because we checked them once already. Many times one little thing that was overlooked causes an accident or an incident.
All our flight teams are made up of individuals. It doesn't take a title or stack of initials at the end of a nametag to make a leader; it just takes someone doing what he or she knows is right. I sincerely believe that leadership and discipline at the individual level determine the level of safety and competence of each flight. We all have that ability, or we wouldn't be doing what we do.
Soon we will meet in Austin for our annual conference. It would be great to get there without hearing about another accident. It is only up to us.
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