ASAP
Thursday, December 11th, 2008Confession is good for the soul and it’s good for aviation safety. Volunteering to the community that you screwed up gets the problem out where all can look at it and work on future prevention. Several airlines have recently canceled their voluntary safety reporting programs, known as ASAP. On the face of it, it appears that management –union relations have gotten so toxic that they just can’t accept the greater good that comes from letting someone off the hook in exchange for getting safety data that might well prevent a major mishap.
As in all these situations, there is truth on both sides with bad actors and vindictive players. It’s time for some leadership to get beyond self interest and focus on the greater good. GA has our own version of this, NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), which allows anyone to point out a safety defect that they observed or may have caused. If there was a violation and the FAA found out about it, they could pursue it but they could not inflict punishment, such as suspension. There is no continuing get-out-of-jail free card here. You can only use the “waiver-of-sanction” deal once every 5 years.
Every pilot should be familiar with this program http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/– I’ve used it a number of times myself. ASF receives regular reports from ASRS on problem areas and we often take action to see that a particular problem is taken seriously by those in a position to do something about it.
Fortunately, ASRS is very much alive and well, even as various ASAP programs fall victim to internal politics. Bottom line: the management, unions and FAA need to get ASAP working again – ASAP!
Epilogue to Verify, Verify, Verify : You’ll recall we had a really close call in Allentown, PA where a RJ nearly ran down a Cessna that had not cleared the runway. I got a nice note from reader, James Marshall, who felt that I was a bit tough on the RJ crew for “Apparently not visually scanning the runway prior to takeoff.”
He had some additional information. “They in fact did, but were unable to clearly distinguish many of the runway features due to the presence of emergency vehicles at the far end of the runway working an accident and the associated scene lighting which significantly reduced their ability to see to the middle of the runway.” It’s a good reminder that there are often confounding circumstances, another link in the accident chain, that provide additional incentives to verify when anything is out of the ordinary. It also points out the hazards of the before-the-fact analysis that I sometimes do and it’s appreciated when someone has factual information to clarify misconceptions.



Bruce Landsberg, President of the AOPA Foundation