Technology – John Vincent

Servicing the future

Extrapolation is a dodgy game. That is to take a set of figures from past performance and then projecting them into the future. All too often, even in the world of artificial intelligence, a linear projection is deemed sufficient. Having a mass of collected data and then plotting a line that nicely fits somewhere in the middle. Assuming that there’s a value that is atypical of the accumulated data set.

It’s well accepted that predicting the future is fraught with assumptions. Real life is multidimensional and full of combinations and permutations of possibilities that are off the charts. However, everyday there is enough stability to make planning a useful activity.

There’s the phenomenon of the step change. Overnight a new law may be applicable. In the morning a new system may be switched on. In the evening, a major crash may stop transport links for hours. Events, both predicable and unpredictable throw a spanner in the works.

Trying to predict future workforce needs based on current facts and historic trends is something every major industry must do. I say “must” accepting some struggling and pathological organisations survive on a day-to-day basis.

So, if I start with a 100 people and expect a growth of 5% each year, it’s not unreasonable to think that I might need 105 people next year. It’s surprising how often this basic calculation is presented. Same with the predicable response from a chief executive who would prefer an improvement in productivity. Deliver the same output with the same, or less, people.

Predicting one year ahead is a must. Predicting 10-years ahead is nice. However, in certain industries where, say the products have long lives or the demand for services isn’t going away a long-term projection has meaning.

The search for productivity goes on. Digitisation has made inroads into the paper-based world of a couple of decades ago. I remember when I first held a digital camera in the office. In the mid-1990s it was a whizzy bit of kit to be loaned out on rare occasions.

Artificial intelligence, and all the technology wrapped around it, are reshaping business strategy, risk assessments and workforce planning. Everyone is seeking a competitive advantage.

This morning when I woke up, I was introduced to a new word. It was a BBC radio broadcast called: Rethink: manufacturing or services?[1] It doesn’t exactly roll off the tong. It’s servitization.

The premise is that the line between organisations manufacturing products and those who provide services isn’t a ridged one. Progressively, whatever the product, train, plane or automobile, they use masses of data not only to make but to operate. The data flows rapidly backwards and forwards between maker and operator. And lots of it too.

So, if I had to estimate the number of service engineers that would be needed in the next 10-years, I’d better be aware that their jobs are going to change dramatically. Radically.

However, overall will the numbers of people needed by an industry decrease or not? Or is it just that the nature of work will change for roughly the same overall numbers? That’s not so easy as a straight-line graph. Maybe, as productivity increases so it becomes possible to take on new tasks that previously were not viable. The performance of a product continuously improves.

I’d buy a service and not so much a product. I’ll buy 100,000 miles, not a car.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00325dd

Be fair

Here’s an example of why the public interest needs protection. It’s easy to assume that an App in common usage is comprehensive, unbiased, and trustworthy. But is it?

Sitting in a theatre there’s music playing as people fill the auditorium. Sounds a bit fancy. I’m talking about a local arts centre on a Saturday night. Playing was a compilation of songs and comic tunes few of which I knew. This kept the audience entertained as they shuffled in.

It’s the digital age. One tap on an App on my phone and the result is usually a whirring symbol whilst the App does its analysis to eventually show me what was playing. The whirring symbol kept going. This is hard, so the App excused itself. Then it drew a blank.

The next approach was to pick what seemed to be a theme in the song and look it up on a search engine. There’s the answer. A children’s show theme.

That made me think. Did the App not know the answer or did the App not bother to have reference to that type of song? I went down this line of thinking because what the App normally does is “helpfully” show where a song it has found can be purchased (streamed).

What interest could the App’s algorithm have if there’s nothing available to buy at the end of the process? Any presumption of coverage, fairness and objectivity is merely something I projected on the App’s internal workings. It’s not necessarily there.

The wider point is that placing trust on Apps that are free to download and for the most part produce useful results, as if by magic, maybe not be quite what they seem. Afterall nobody reads the small print – do they?

Some Apps compose data that is extracted from reputable sources. These become popular because of the love of convenience. Within bounds, the information provided can be trusted. This is the general assumption I may make about a freely available weather App.

A key factor here is trust. However, most often that trust only comes about by a regular “try it and see” experience. There’s no mark of quality. There’s no organisation looking after the public interest. Now, if you say to me – that’s what Ofcom[1] does in the UK, I’ll have a little laugh. That regulatory may keep a watching eye on the worst offenders as far as lawbreaking is concerned, but they are not much help in saying this App is a gold star, and this one is equivalent to a dodgy doorstep salesman.

For Apps with mechanical algorithms that chunter out information this may not be a problem. Even if their display includes advertisements and enticements to win a holiday.

What comes next with AI is more concerning. The commercial interests of a smart music identifier are evident. Making recommendations is not to my detriment. Although purposefully fishing in a restricted pool of information could be.

With general purpose Apps, which are a front to AI systems, there’s the potential for manipulation. Where commercial interests are the primary motivator there does need to be someone looking after the public interest. My interests. Yes, I am in favour of regulation.

[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/

Stop and think

Anthropomorphism is more than the world of “Alice in Wonderland”. A talking rabbit is not the least bit strange fictional tale. Our minds happily accept this as a normal part of storytelling. The anthropomorphic qualities of an animal, or an object is not so easy to explain. But we do it all the time. That is thinking of non-human objects as human in a mystical transformative way.

A teddy bear is an object. One eye, fur, fluff and stuffing however shabby. It’s an object but the teddy bear I had when I was 6-years old is something more. It has a personality. Having travelled with me, over the decades, it’s not an object to be thrown away without a thought.

Like others, I do the same with animals. Not always. Occasionally, I go to the bottom of the garden where it adjoins a grassy field. I may talk to the cows. That’s if they are grazing up against the fence. Now, I know those Dexter cows have no idea what I’m saying but that’s unimportant.

Personal computers haven’t been in our lives as long as teddy bears and animals. From the unwieldy plastic boxes that filled our desks they have transformed into tablets, lap-tops and super smart phones. These devices can be sources of great utility or, on bad days, incredible annoyance. Fliting with both times saving or time destroying.

It’s likely that a machine’s anthropomorphic qualities come out when we are most frustrated. That instantly takes me to the scene from the BBC’s Fawlty Towers[1]. It’s a memorable comic scene. It’s Basil Fawlty’s frustration peeks when his car breaks down at the most inconvenient moment possible. He gives his car a damn good trashing. The car doesn’t flinch or runaway.

Who hasn’t sworn at a computer? I’d label you untrustworthy if you answered – never. I’ve done it more times than I can remember, as if my computer could feel my annoyance. An inanimate black box, full of integrated circuits, memory chips, circuit boards, components, connectors, and multi-coloured wires.

One aspect of computing, that I can state without fear of contradiction. They don’t care. Not one bit. How can they? Caring is a human reaction.

By the way, in 1975, Basil Fawlty’s Austin 1100 Countryman (Estate) car had negligible electronics even if it was probably the car’s electrics at the root of his overwhelming frustration.

I’ve lead you down this path because the thought I have in mind is – will AI make a difference?

We humans are highly influenced by the nature of tasks. Having to read a simple advertising slogan is a million miles from learning from a dense book packed with complex detail.

It’s easy to forget that a computer has no opinion on the tasks that it’s given. Big or small. Awkward or easy. There may be ten lines of code to execute, or a thousand or millions.

My question is – are we anthropomorphising AI? When I read some articles about the future there’s a suggestion that computer code has become like the talking rabbit. It’s more than a synthetic voice composed from trillions on electrical ones and noughts. Blind we become to the reality of billions of machine instructions being crunched. Invisible is the reality of the billions of semiconductor junctions working at unfathomable speeds.

Using jazzy description like; “super intelligence” gives machines a mythical god like status. This is way off the mark in 2026. Powerful computing is truly amazing. AI is developing at an astonishing speed. That said, it’s an exceedingly long way from being anything like us. It’s true I may not be able to say the same in 2046, but we are not there now. What we can say confidently is that nature has had a head start of billions of years. And conscious creatures are vast orders of magnitude more complex than silicon-based electronics.

[1] https://youtu.be/78b67l_yxUc

AI Now

Without a long and tendinous epical on the ethical concerns raised by AI it might be as well to consider several of the practical changes that it has brought about in everyday life. Let’s go for something as simple as applying for a job. An experience that has changed considerably.

I think it’s well written up that this is not a great time to leave school or graduate. The prospect of applying for hundreds of jobs and getting a pile of rejections is an unsettling experience. Fine, during recessions, such as have happened in the past, this is not entirely unusual.

I’ve done my fair share of recruitment. That’s recruitment applying a paper based but highly bureaucratic process to address a pile of job applications. The writing of vacancy notices and setting criteria for a recruitment can be a time-consuming task. That is if the aim is to uphold the best practices that are current or even mandated. at the time.

It’s unsurprising that employers and recruitment agencies are now using AI tools to process applications as they arrive, most often via e-mail. Paper is going out of the window. That world I knew of having a file busting at the seams, and methodically working through it, are gone.

Like a vast electronic funnel applications are pushed in, are sieved through a filter, and some pop out at the at the other end of a hidden process. Hundreds of automated rejections are then created and scattered like confetti amongst those who failed to get past the AI gate keeper.

No wonder young people get a bit dejected as they accumulate masses of machine generated rejections. It’s not them, it’s a process. Easy to say but rejection can feel very personal.

However, there’s a smart fight back. AI can help (or can it). Let’s say I want a job that fits my profile. My ambitions, experience and talents. Just ask one of the AIs out there to generate a “prefect” CV. Feed it the relevant information. Next ask the AI to survey all the current vacancies for jobs that I could apply for with my generic CV. Then select the ones of interest. Having that list, feed the results into AI asking it to tailor a CV and application to fit the requirements of each one. Then automatically fire off the job applications. Error free, formatted to suite the style of the moment and fully customised.

I think you can see where I’m going with this description of events. Yes, it is dehumanising. If both applicant and potential employer are using AI, without human intervention, there’s a battle of the machines going on. Noone need communicate a single word.

It’s like a human – machine – human sandwich. There’s no malicious intention in all this processing. Objectives are set to try and match people with opportunities, but the unintended consequences are ruinous. In fact, it’s like a Monty Python sketch for today.

Not for one moment am I saying that a process is not needed. What’s getting into the realms of science fiction is the escalation that is possible with AI tools. That interface between aspiring employee and potential employer becomes an algorithmic battle.

Because AI costs are so low then this mechanism can be applied at all levels, whether it’s applying to flip burgers or become a commercial pilot.

I’m not having a downer on AI. It’s just that we much never forget the need for the human touch. More than that, if the end results of the above mass processing is cynicism and demotivation again the results are unintended consequences. So, think before creating a new process.

Rise of AI: A Double-Edged Sword

Spotting AI generated articles is a hobby that is designed to be a minority pursuit. There will, no doubt, come a time when the writings of a human and that of a machine will become indistinguishable. I don’t think we are there – yet. Headlines like “Aircraft flies through heavy rain” are either a bored human scribbler or a machine with time on its hands.

The early promoters of the INTERNET imagined a great library of existing material becoming easily and freely accessible to anyone and everyone. It was to be an enlightened development that drove the digitisation of massive amounts of information. Although, even now, it’s not too difficult to pick an obscure book or magazine off a charity shop shelf and find that there’s no reference to it on-line. True, it’s getting harder to do.

That which hasn’t made it to the digital world, like boxes of 35mm slides I inherited from my father-in-law, will sit quietly gathering dust in the attic. I hardly think this is a great loss to humanity. Although, random holiday snaps of Cornish landscapes from the 1970s might one day become fashionable. More likely they will gather another decade’s dust.

Making the INTERNET the modern equivalent of the great library of Alexandria[1] is a worthy ambition. Civilisation could be defined in a way that embraces a preservation of knowledge. What we find is that the 21^st century version of the digital world has strayed from these high-minded ideas of its early promoters.

My desktop, tablet, and phone can access a universal store of fact and fiction, truth and lies. What is troubling is that the line between these is becoming increasingly blurred. The demand for instant and every changing material is insatiable. In the past, technology was the limiting factor. Now, it’s not.

Here’s a compilation of likely headlines from our machine friends. I can’t be sure and it remains possible that a human may have authored some of these eye-catching wonders.

“Astronauts face dangers during spacewalks.” “Most fascinating deserts on Earth.” “The beach that many consider to be the best on the entire planet.” “Study claims aliens may be hiding on Earth.” “They found a triangular UFO in the woods – then it vanished without a sound.”

I note from 5-minutes watching headlines change that the craft of catching our attention is the one that is most valued. The term – click-bait – was made to describe what’s going on. Whatever words can be framed to entice a potential reader/viewer to go here and not there, that has value.

Again, what’s concerning is that it will be algorithms that will master the art of catching our attention. They do. They will surpass smart thinkers and artful writers. Mainly because they instantly have a whole well of past successes to draw upon.

For sanity’s sake, I need to stop this line of thinking. The further I look the more we become destined to a dystopia that was portrayed in a movie that hit the screens before the mobile phone became ubiquitous. A 20th century fiction that made everyone sit up and think, as well as being highly entertaining, was The Matrix. Now, it called a classic.

A generation on and AI produced material is filling our screens. It’s not yet dominant. There’s a small amount of kick-back too. Not time for a rebellion. Question is – will those born now be the rebels or the captives of this digital revolution.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Library-of-Alexandria

Digital Age Dilemma

There was a time when most of the political parties in the UK would object to mass surveillance and the State having a watchful eye on every one of its citizens. The influence of the Magna Carta, that 800-year-old document, was a keystone of thinking in this country. Although it was aimed at the privileged when first placed in front of a Monarch, it embraced the idea of liberty. It so upset the establishment that a Pope denounced it.

Ideas endure and those contained in the Magna Carta went on to inspire the framers of the constitutions and legislation in many countries. It doesn’t sound so strange in modern times that a person should be able to go about their lives without an overbearing State impinging on their liberty. Well, at least in theory.

I remember the intense debates that took place in the mid-1990s. The subject being the introduction of identity cards in the UK. Technical arguments were made of how such a measure would simplify lives in the coming digital age. Those agreements paid little attention to the erosion of fundamental rights that the centralising personal data on citizens would bring.

What’s happened now, through a process of stealth, is that people have given away vast qualities of data to international commercial entities without batting an eyelid. The legal device that has been used is a contract that few people ever read. The End User License Agreement (EULA). This detailed fine print addresses data collection and aims to protect software providers from liability.

I suspect that Conservative politicians have observed how little attention people are paying to the erosion of their rights that they feel emboldened to abandon any commitments to liberty. For some time now the Conservative mantra of has been to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This is based on a gamble that most people will not have read the document. It’s a bit like the snatch and grab that the typical EULA has become.

Now, the Conservative Party has doubled down on a shift to the right of politics by inviting the prospect of mass surveillance. There’s a reasonable argument for the police to excurse powers to delve into the digital world when investigating crime. In fact, how can they not do so. However, this should be done so when there’s reasonable basis for doing so. Not everyone is a suspect of criminal activity. The law of the land still upholds the idea that guilt must be proven.

Computational tools are getting ever more powerful. I could joke that the number of articles on AI would reach to the Moon and back, but I wouldn’t be far wrong. One of the powerful software tools that’s accumulating uses is that of digital facial recognition. We’ve advanced from the days of inky fingerprints, although such prints are still valuable identifiers.

Where do we have a problem with liberty? The framers of many longstanding constitutions didn’t have to think to hard about what liberty meant in a world devoid of digital cameras. Now, any citizen’s image is going to be caught hundreds of times through the day. Maybe thousands of times. That instant image can be present on storage devices across the globe.

Who owns that image of me or you? Can it be used by anyone? Tricky questions given phones, traffic cameras, doorbells and home and business security cameras are subject to EULAs. On a superficial basis, requiring police forces to extract digital images and run them through a national database can sound like a good crime fighting idea.

The problem is where is the line drawn? Mass surveillance? Where everyone is an immediate suspect until proven not guilty? Not guilty by virtue of the calculation of an algorithm. Widespread digital camera coverage does put this in prospect. Images stored all over the world. Do we need to reframe the Magna Carta for the AI age? Now, there’s a thought.

Future of Aviation: Enhancing Safety and Resilience

The aim is clear. A safe, secure, sustainable and resilient international aviation system. I’d add to that list an ambition to continuously improve.

And that’s in the face of the challenge that was recognised 30-years ago. With an aviation system that knows how to archives a high level of safety, even incremental improvement is challenging. Factor in projected air traffic growth that’s unabating. What we know is that that continuously improving the global accident rate requires active interventions.

Since here I can only highlight the key priorities, I’ll choose three aspects of active intervention. Back to what I said earlier in my talk. Aviation is still climbing a maturity ladder. Digitisation has facilitated a growth in proactive work. Initiatives and plans identify actions aimed at solving known aviation safety problems. But the next step remains some way off. It’s that ability to anticipate safety problems before they occur. To predict.

We have the notion of safety intelligence. There are Big Data projects that are gathering large quantities of aviation safety data. Today, what might be called prognostics continues to depend on expert judgement. That’s not negative, as such. In fact, that augmented by objective and trustworthy safety intelligence is a route to the next step in maturity.

In my view, here’s the three categories that must be addressed now and, in the next decade.

One is a foundation stone of aviation safety work. It’s the capability and will to react in a timely manner to events. Not just accidents and serious incidents but any event that elevates aviation safety risks above acceptable levels.

Top operational risk that are likely to need immediate actions are those involving loss of control and those concerning runway incidents.

To take timely corrective action the results of investigation need to be readily available. As pointed out by the industry, across the globe, there’s much scope for improvement here. Timeliness matters.

My next category is that of systemic risks. System wide safety risks. People, organisations, processes, procedures, the human factor and human performance issues.

Much is being done to ensure the effective implementation of safety management systems (SMS). The four pillars of SMS have proven to work – safety policy, risk management, safety assurance and safety promotion.

The acceptance, elimination or mitigation of risks is not an act that begins on one day and stops on the next. Digitation can help but there’s always the dangers of the needle in a haystack or even problems sitting in plain sight.

What’s often weak is the communication of what’s discovered. Believable, understandable straightforward communication to decision makers is vital.

Thirdly, what’s ahead of us is an order of magnitude more complex than what’s gone before. And a rate of change that mindboggling.

I’m calling this emerging aviation safety risks. The question arises; are we ready for advanced leaps in technology? Hydrogen, hybrid propulsion, machine learning, quantum computing, complex airspace networks and robotics. Humans as executive manager whilst retaining control only in emergencies.

It’s a famous quote; data is the new oil. We are ushering in extremely large and complex datasets that will be essential to the workings of automated and autonomous systems. Could data be the new quicksand? This is a huge issue in dense airspace where crewed and uncrewed aircraft must share the airspace.

Another emerging aviation safety risks, that industry and regulators are starting to address is the fact that safety and security have become inseparable. In the past, these disciplines were addressed as silos. That’s no longer viable.

Another emerging aviation safety risk is that of the workforce. Aviation has attracted dedicated professionals who acquire experience and train to a high level of competence. A safety culture has been embedded. In this respect the fundamentals of aviation safety remain constant.

The rapid growth of technology is a two-edged sword. Now, there are many opportunities for future generations, but aviation may not be at the top of the list of choices, as it has been. There’s a serious aviation safety risk if serious investments are not made, people are not motivated and able to gain the competencies needed by a rapidly changing industry.

To sum up. Everything I’ve spoken of can only be addressed in partnerships. In the past, the aviation industry and its regulators have proven themselves to be imaginative, resilient and forward looking.

The challenges ahead, dare I say, are even greater. Levels of integration, interdependency and rapid technology adoption are off the charts. Yet, I believe we can continually improve global aviation safety. We can step up.

POST: Farnborough International Air Show 2026. 20-24 July 2026.

Current State of Aviation Safety: Data-Driven

The present day. Today. There will be Press Releases galore at this air show. I expect ambitious and upbeat predictions. More orders. More growth. More developing markets. Demands for more skilled people, more performance, more pressure for the early adoption of rapidly changing technologies.

My subject is safety. Where are we with aviation safety in the present day? There’s a sound legacy. Afterall aviation has a long tail. What we have now, and if I look at the Farnborough Airshow catalogue of ten years ago[1], is digitisation. The ambition to be data-driven. A continuing drive to exploit data of all kinds. Extracting information from ever increasing sources in aviation.

This desire for actionable safety intelligence is not new. On my desk I have a coaster celebrating the UK CAA’s MOR Scheme[2]. That’s been alive for 50 years (1976-2026). Occurrence data has been, and is being, used to construct all sorts of safety performance indicators. These indicators can be useful but it’s not always so. They are fuel for safety management systems.

I used the word “actionable” with purpose. Today, making the results of safety data analysis useable by front-line actors and responsible managers has been a challenge we wrestle. I’ve often heard it said – that’s great but what do I do about it? Too many “greens” on a chart and complacency can set in. Too many “reds” and everyone goes into panic mode.

I have been fortunate to work with a number of safety initiative. One called the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) in the US. To match its work, on this continent, I set up a European version; ECAST in 2006. The focus was on data-drive analysis. There’re safety teams for Rotorcraft and General Aviation too.

These safety initiatives came about a reactive way. Reporting in 1997, the Gore Commission, was a reaction to dilemmas that is still with us. What to do in the wake of catastrophic accidents. And more pertinent to this talk; what to do when the global accident rate curve looks flat at the same time as predictions are for a significant growth in global air traffic. Reading this report now, the predictions were horrifying. Predictions of one large aeroplane fatal accident every week by now. Luckily, commercial air transport didn’t suffer that fate.

I should NOT say “luckily”. Current safety performance is down to an enormous amount of work done by thousands of aviation professionals over a sustained period. Not only this but shocks, whether they be financial crisis, volcanic eruptions or global pandemics, have tested this industry severely.

Taking on board what was learned over the decades, safety management has developed and matured. Incorporated in aviation’s safety regulatory framework, it’s now practiced across the whole industry. Almost. We don’t just react. We now have Safety Plans. Lists of actionable tasks aimed at continuous safety improvement. On the scale mentioned earlier – we are proactive.

Let me stop. This is not a utopia. I’d say at least half the global aviation industry is struggling with the need to be proactive. So, the road we are travelling on remains a long one. We don’t just need the capability to do better; we need to maintain the will to do better.

[1] 50^th Farnborough Air Show in 2016.

[2] https://www.caa.co.uk/about-us/make-a-report-or-complaint/report-something/mor/occurrence-reporting/

Digital Dependency

Here’s a collection of annoying and sometime hazardous events that can happen in our digital world. Digital dependency is growing at an ever-increasing rate. There’s no way we can put our head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening. Yet, I’d say we are ill-prepared for the stuff that can go wrong. Well, anyone over the age of 25 years can be ill-prepared. Maybe the younger ones are ill-prepared too because of the immense trust they place in digital systems.

Last night, the wonderful “smart” TV that sits in our living room behaved in a way that is designed to get anyone’s back-up. Ironically that’s the function that is often missing – back-up.

Do I blame my clever Sony digital TV or the App that’s running on the TV? The many Apps. Anyway, the TV guide displayed but every time a selection was made the TV screen went blank. Me being used to troubleshooting, I tried another App. All worked fine. So, only one App was misbehaving. Ony one App was not doing what it should do.

To most people this would be a shout out to say; my TV is broken. How can it be broken it’s nearly new? It’s not performing its most basic function. To me, my deduction was that the App that provides the digital stream of the live broadcast channels was doing some kind of update but, unhelpfully, not telling anyone about it. The dumb thing is that the screen went blank. No information. Why the developers of this App couldn’t have thought ahead and put up the screen words saying – please wait – I have no idea. Perhaps they like to see our blood boil.

By the way, the above event happened just at the end of a world cup football game last evening.

Believe it or not, this irritating blank screen case has occurred in flight on an in-service aircraft. The main displays in the aircraft cockpit blanked. For those who may not be familiar, the main critical flight information is displayed to pilots on electronic screens in a modern aircraft cockpit. So, when everything goes blank it’s not a nice situation. Because safety is the primary concern there are independent standby instruments. They are only basic and aimed at managing the situation.

The case that I’m writing about above was because of a notorious software error. One that’s by no means new. Most serious and well-trained developers will know the case.

Do a little maths. Have you ever taken any number and divided it by zero? For fun, I picked up a desk calculator, yes, they still exist and did this simple sum. The makers, Casio have that one figured out. A small E comes up on the corner of the screen. E for error. Trapping this potential error is elementary best practice. For flight safety related systems, it’s vital.

What’s my message? It’s to understand what it means for something to be broken.

A vast swath of the population continues to have a, learned from experience, idea of what broken means. It’s basically an analogue notion. If I get a puncture in the wheel of my car’s tyre it’s visible, it’s understandable and it’s fixable. It’s a physical phenomenon.

If my super-duper mobile phone does something strange and unexpected, it might be visible, understandable and fixable but it might not be. In essence I have few ways of knowing. I hesitate to introduce the subject of Wi-Fi connected computer printers to this short article, but I will. Some of the most frustrating, unhelpful and mysterious software has been developed for this equipment. Annoying to a level that is difficult to match anywhere on Earth.

Lessons from Operational Events

For an aviation industry that takes pride in learning lessons from experience and taking timely corrective action, a series of operational events is surprising to say the least.

Today’s large aircraft do look much the same. The tricycle undercarriage has become universal. A set of steerable wheels at the front and a heavy set of landing gear, each side, to the rear. When parked, a nose gear collapse or inadvertent retraction on a large aircraft is not catastrophic. The aircraft can be recovered, inspected, and repaired. This undesirable event can be dangerous for anyone in the vicinity. It has the potential to be fatal. Fortunately, so far, there has been no fatalities.

For an aircraft operator such an event at an airport gate is a massive expense. Putting an in-service aircraft out of action for a considerable time.

To date, several damaging nose gear collapse (and alike) events have occurred to large aircraft[1]. Detailed analysis of these events exists and corrective actions are proposed.

One conclusion is to say that this is about people not following procedures. That is the instruction is to put a pin in one place but instead it gets put in the wrong place. So, this dramatic unintended event is written up as a maintenance error. It’s an outcome that no one intended. That’s fine. There’s no doubt that an error was made. Accepting that an error occurred is not a reason to blame. That is if there are no signs of negligence.

The trouble is the simple question – how easy was it to make that error?

Then we get into that grey area of the gap between aircraft design and operations. In a design office it may be reasonably assumed that a procedure will be followed in an almost robotic manner. No need for the people in operations to think beyond taking the same action day-after-day. This would surely become widespread practice.

As we know the actual environment of aircraft operations can be more demanding than the original equipment manufactures might imagine. Pressure to turn around an aircraft can be high, working conditions can be poor and fatigue can play a part.

There are lines of communication between the aircraft design and operations organisations, and such difficulties are regularly discussed.

Faced with an event categorised as maintenance error then what next? Redesign the aircraft? Change a procedure or require more training? Those are three of the options, there are more.

This is where the possible discussion gets reactive. Now, it would be extremely costly to redesign an aircraft for the sake of an event that is rare or for which the consequences are minor. It is possible to put numbers on each of these. The rarity, the cost, and the impact.

Modifying or rewriting a procedure, on the other hand, can be less costly and it may be quite sufficient as a corrective action. That said, any procedure that can be written can be subject to error. In fact, the original procedure may have been straightforward and well thought out.

Then there is the fall-back position. Give the people in aircraft operations more training. The assumption being that more training means less errors. It is a crude assumption because this is not a linear relationship. So many other factors come into play.

Discussions surround the above possibilities can become protracted. There’s a call for more analysis and more data. There’s the proposal for a study to be conducted. Once in that loop a year can go by as if it was a month.

There’s always the argument that highlights dozens of aircraft operators haven’t had this event occur and therefore the finger is pointed at those who have. This argument gets an outing, but it is foolish. It’s like saying – I haven’t had an accident yet, and therefore I’m safe. Foolish.

There are a lot of detailed discussions and a million and one opinions. Taking the big picture, this is a problem that is solvable[2]. What is surprising is the reoccurrence of the problem.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/aaib-special-bulletin-g-zbjb-inadvertent-nose-landing-gear-retraction-during-pre-flight-maintenance

[2] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/12/12/2019-26734/airworthiness-directives-the-boeing-company-airplanes