Some Aviations Preventive Measures

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signtwist

Filing Flight Plan
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Geoffrey Mason
Hello , everyone! Well, I just want to make sure about this. I don't know anything about aviation or airlines policy in terms of managing a safety and comfortable flights. But for the fear that most aircraft are encountering issues these days. I want to find out about the possible quality assurance that an aircraft is safe. Am I correct that a quality management must meet a standard to automatically detect problems before it occurs? How do they go about this? As a passenger, I also want to learn about how does aviation manage any risks that might occur?
 
There is no such thing as "saftey" or "security"

If you eat transfats, smoke cigarettes, or have bad genetics, are overweight, you shouldn't even be worrying about aircraft saftey, HIGHLY unlikely that it's how you're going to check out.

But yes, we do preflight inspections, 100hr inspections, medical inspections, etc, etc, etc.


Lots of stuff to worry about in this country, aviation isn't one of those things, well minus the government over regulating it.
 
In a part 121 airline setting, the descriptions would be too long for a chat forum.

Maintenance, pilot training & standardization, aircraft design standards, all could be thousands of pages each.

It's a heavily regulated, and unionized industry.

Honestly this is the only business I'm happy that is so heavily regulated and unionized.
 
Going by historical statistics, you're far safer in an airliner than you are driving to the airport.
 
Your initial premise is incorrect. Most aircraft are NOT encountering issues these days.

The quality control, inspections, preventive maintenance, training, regulations, standardization, safety culture and self-preservation assure that airline travel in the U.S. is the safest method of travel, and probably one of the safest activities you can engage in.

It is so safe on a routine basis that whenever an airline has a little hiccup it makes major headlines, which may not even be justified from a news standpoint.

Before I retired, my daily life was governed by 12 books, each about 10 inches thick, with which I had to be familiar and refer to constantly and which were subject to constant and unannounced government inspections, and our daily procedures and activities better be documented and recorded as being in accordance with those books.


I can assure you, safety comes before comfort. Or convenience. Or anything else.

Here's a time-lapse video of an airliner in a heavy maintenance check.

 
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Airlines and the type of aircraft they use vs private pilots like most of us here and what we fly are very very different things just so you know.

The major airlines fly the same types of aircraft on the same types of flight so often that they have everything streamlined. Accidents are extremely rare with them these days and when the rare ones do happen they change something- whether it's a procedure or a physical part to prevent it from happening again. Since their flights are so consistent they're able to weed out *almost* anything that might cause an accident including a lot of the common human mistakes. You'd be wrong to think nothing goes wrong with them... things go wrong with them all the time but there's enough redundancy built in that a passenger would never know the difference.
 
Mason said:
Your initial premise is incorrect. Most aircraft are NOT encountering issues these days.

The quality control, inspections, preventive maintenance, training, regulations, standardization, safety culture and self-preservation assure that airline travel in the U.S. is the safest method of travel, and probably one of the safest activities you can engage in.

It is so safe on a routine basis that whenever an airline has a little hiccup it makes major headlines, which may not even be justified from a news standpoint.

Before I retired, my daily life was governed by 12 books, each about 10 inches thick, with which I had to be familiar and refer to constantly and which were subject to constant and unannounced government inspections, and our daily procedures and activities better be documented and recorded as being in accordance with those books.
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signtwist said:
Hello , everyone! Well, I just want to make sure about this. I don't know anything about aviation or airlines policy in terms of managing a safety and comfortable flights. But for the fear that most aircraft are encountering issues these days. I want to find out about the possible quality assurance that an aircraft is safe. Am I correct that a quality management must meet a standard to automatically detect problems before it occurs? How do they go about this? As a passenger, I also want to learn about how does aviation manage any risks that might occur?
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This should keep you busy for a little bit:

https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/sms/specifics_by_aviation_industry_type/121/
 
Even the small guys, part 135 scheduled operations go through the same stuff. The company I am flying for this summer is losing one of its Cessna Caravans for 8 to 10 weeks as it goes through a 20,000 hour inspection. Basically the airplane will be taken apart and every part inspected and repaired or replaced as necessary, then put back together.
 
Training, automation, redundancy (backup equipment), and adequate design margin.....the historical data proves out airliner travel is the safest mode of transportation in the world.
 
Am sometime on airplanes working, yet parts remain on bench after assembly? Yes worry much, but then O.K. so far. . .better when than drinking much, when flying for pay, though. . .sad those happy days backwards time now, since talking voices not there revealed to AME. Miss boom-boom on stews laid over. Hot section inspection is brain hurting, but slowing easy to pages when skipped. Safety wire?
 
Mason said:
Your initial premise is incorrect. Most aircraft are NOT encountering issues these days.

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Agree, first thing I thought when I read that. Apparently someone who reads about a plane crash and feels all planes are unsafe, regardless of the thousands of flights safely flown every day.
 
2,300,000 people injured/mangled in AUTOMOBILE crashes with 33,000 deaths, every year
The 30 year average aircraft fatal crash rate in the USA is 38 crashes a year (varies up and down considerably)
Why are we even discussing this
To the OP, go take some flying lessons
Or Valium
Your call
 
Dr. O said:
2,300,000 people injured/mangled in AUTOMOBILE crashes with 33,000 deaths, every year
The 30 year average aircraft fatal crash rate in the USA is 38 crashes a year (varies up and down considerably)
Why are we even discussing this
To the OP, go take some flying lessons
Or Valium
Your call
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Toss in heart diease from poor diet (fat) or poor breeding.
 
signtwist said:
Hello , everyone! Well, I just want to make sure about this. I don't know anything about aviation or airlines policy in terms of managing a safety and comfortable flights. But for the fear that most aircraft are encountering issues these days. I want to find out about the possible quality assurance that an aircraft is safe. Am I correct that a quality management must meet a standard to automatically detect problems before it occurs? How do they go about this? As a passenger, I also want to learn about how does aviation manage any risks that might occur?
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No, no automatic detection - stuff breaks all the time. If it doesn't result in a flaming death pyre of fuel, aluminum, and body parts, they fix it at the next oppurtunity. Unless it can wait. In my fifth decade of flying, but don't recall ever leaving the ground in an airplane in which something wasn't broke. Most of the time it was something I could do without. Or there was more than one. Usually.

Aviation manages risk mostly by good engineering, blind luck, pilot sense of self preservation, voodoo chicken sacrifice, and gruesome lessons learned from grisly experience. Generally speaking, most of the ways flying can kill you have been revealed by now, and the aviation community and gov'ts have beaten those discoveries to death, in training, regs, and usually over-the-top emphasis, to the point of crying wolf.

Now and then a new way to snuff you out is revealed - microbursts a few decades back, for example. . .right now, the favorite fatal mistake is blending shaky fundamental flying skills with wretched automation design.
 
Aviation, specifically commerical aviation, is one of, if not the most regulated industries in the U.S.

Understand that the rhetoric you see broadcasted in the media about an aviation incident or accident is typically an innaccurate account of what actually happened, so take those headlines with a grain of salt. Risk is involved in everything you do, but stepping foot onto an airliner is statistically one of the safest things you can do.
 
The experts said it all, signtwist. My husband is an aircraft mechanic in one of the best airlines so we get to travel a lot. When our only daughter was younger, every time we travel, she always asks her Dad what if our airplane crashes? He always tells our daughter that it's most likely you die in a car accident than an airplane crash.
 
Thanks guys. My friend also told me they use ERM software as well to prevent any problems. I didn't know that. I'm relieved to know that they do take safety seriously.
 
Hmm, I thought the big iron pilots just kept one of these in their locker to help keep them flyin'

Jobu.jpeg
 
Zeldman said:
Even the small guys, part 135 scheduled operations go through the same stuff. The company I am flying for this summer is losing one of its Cessna Caravans for 8 to 10 weeks as it goes through a 20,000 hour inspection. Basically the airplane will be taken apart and every part inspected and repaired or replaced as necessary, then put back together.
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Many operations won't do that. It's almost as expensive as buying a new plane.
 
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