Famed pilot Scott Crossfield’s last words on 19 April 2006 were mundane. “Atlanta, this is seven niner x-ray, I’d like to deviate south weather,” he transmitted. The controller replied, “Six five seven niner x-ray, roger, we’ll show you deviating south for weather, and your Mode C [transponder] indicates one one thousand five hundred.”

William Voss, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Flight Safety Foundation, asserts that air safety has improved significantly in the past decade:

“In the last 10 years, the accident rate has gone down dramatically around the world, and principally it has gone down in areas where we have started using information before accidents occur. Maybe we don’t have full-blown information from SMS [Safety Management Systems], but there’s a lot of FOQA [Flight Operations Quality Assurance] data … and I’d argue that in the last decade it’s had a big effect.

There is an intellectual foundation to goal setting. Under the late and esteemed W. Edward Deming’s concept of Total Quality Management (TQM), a clear statement of the goal is the first order of business. So what is the safety goal of every airline executive? What executive is willing to admit that his goal is only, say, one crash or so many dead or injured passengers or employees? As the saying goes, we differentiate between goals and expectations.

Former FAA Administrator Marion Blakey said the next goal regarding safety is to further reduce the number of fatalities. There are a few considerations, however, to what she is saying. At the 6 September town hall meeting with FAA employees, Blakey said:

“We’ll be using a new performance metric for commercial air carrier safety – fatalities per 100 million persons on board … We aim to cut this risk in half … We are currently at 8.8 fatalities per 100 million persons on board, and will focus our efforts to get to 4.4 fatalities by 2025.”

Recall the expressions of concern about the Multi-crew Pilot License (MPL) program voiced at the recent Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) safety forum (see Air Accident Digest, 4 September 2007, p. 20-23, “Bowing To The Inevitable”). Some pilots disparagingly refer to MPL as “minimum pilot learning” because the program only requires 40 hours in the cockpit, as opposed to 150 hours or more in current pilot training programs.

A great video offers a spoof on pilots, asserting that they have become little more than computer-minders in sharp uniforms. The video stars John Malkovich as the gift shop salesman at a hotel, showing two uniformed pilots a new aviator watch. One pilot expresses his high regard for the watch, to which Malkovich’s character replies:

“Whenever human beings and ozone are simultaneously present, one anticipates production of acetone,” declares a study in the September 2007 issue of Environmental Science & Technology. Acetone is just one of the witches’ brew of products created by the interaction of passengers and ozone; the other products include formic acid, acetic acid, and other potentially irritating compounds.