COMMENTARY: A steady hand needed on the controls in aviation safety
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By Jyri Raivio
As yet we have no firm information on the cause or causes of Wednesday’s catastrophic air crash at Madrid’s Barajas Airport, which took more than 150 lives.
The disaster ended in tragic fashion a long positive period in the air safety records of the major aviation countries.
Economic good times have seen a good many new players entering the business in the past decade, particularly in the budget airlines sector.
Many of these operators have since gone under, but the cash has fortunately run out before the aircraft themselves have tumbled from the skies, and it has mainly been the financiers who have got hurt.
The safety records of the cut-price airlines have been just as good as those of the traditional national carriers.
In recent years there have certainly been a lot of terrible air accidents, but they have taken place far from these shores and in a very different operating environment from our own.
A particular cause for concern has been air cargo traffic in the developing world, above all in Africa.
Nevertheless, the crash of Spanair Flight JK 5022 gave a salutary lesson that right now is a time for a very steady hand on the controls in aviation safety matters.
The commercial aviation branch has slipped - in some cases with prodigious speed - into a serious profitability crisis.
An airline that actually makes money is these days beginning to be a rare and newsworthy occurrence.
When the balance sheet numbers start flashing red and the coffers are empty, management tries to find ways and means of saving money where it can.
It requires a strong will and a deep-rooted safety culture to say “No” to all the sort of cost-cutting measures that might have an impact on air safety.
And there are a myriad such areas where belts can be tightened and corners cut, whether on the technical side, in staff training, or even in flight operations.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the aviation authorities, too, are on a crisis path, particularly in Europe. The transfer of regulatory and oversight responsibility on civilian air safety to the EU level has generated a huge bureaucratic jungle.
National civil aviation authorities and airlines wring their hands at the orders - sometimes mutually contradictory - that are handed down by the Cologne-based European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), widely seen as underfunded and with resources in some cases directed to the wrong issues.
The shortage of resources also affects Finland’s own Civil Aviation Authority (Ilmailuhallinto), which is wrestling with large problems of its own.
In addition, the Ministry of Transport and Communications is planning the CAA’s merger with the rail and road safety authorities - not as a means of promoting safety but as another way of saving costs.
In the current climate, the idea is as bad as they come, and should be abandoned.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 23.8.2008
JYRI RAIVIO / Helsingin Sanomat
jyri.raivio@hs.fi
