Dan Parsons 5/4/20 Dan Parsons 5/4/20

Heads Up: Watch Out for Wildlife (Updated)

No need to rehash the current situation, aviation is hurting and traffic numbers are going down.

So why post about wildlife strikes? With traffic down, we should see less strikes, shouldn’t we? Maybe not…

Over the last couple of months, I have been doing some deep diving into the FAA’s wildlife strike database. It is an aerodrome safety nerd’s paradise. There is so much data and a little crunching can reveal some very interesting things.

I want to share one of these insights with you in light our current circumstances.

Image credit: (cc) Quintin Gellar on Pexels

Dan Parsons 21/10/17 Dan Parsons 21/10/17

The $200K Kangaroo

I’m not a big fan of safety tropes. They are often repeated without much thought and eventually this repetition becomes detached from the concept the trope is trying to convey. With many tropes, there are few non-trivial or non-catastrophic events that can reinforce the trope.

The saying on my mind today is “if you think safety is expensive, try having an accident”. The “accident” I often think about is something big, something catastrophic and something that happens to other people. I rarely uttered this trope because I, personally, didn’t feel the power of it.

Now, thanks to a court case in Australia, I feel the power has been returned to this saying. We know have a non-catastrophic event with quantifiable costs associated with the “safety” part and the “accident” part. Plus, I think nearly every airport safety professional out there can empathise with the operator in the case

Dan Parsons 28/7/12 Dan Parsons 28/7/12

Lessons from Taleb's Black Swan

Having just finished reading Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan, I initially thought about writing a not-so-in-depth assessment of the book's positive and negative points - but I'm not much of a book reviewer and a comprehensive critique is probably beyond my capabilities (at this stage). So, instead I thought I would focus on just a couple of the book's significant concepts and explore how they may apply in the aviation context.

Dan Parsons 17/6/12 Dan Parsons 17/6/12

Under Thinking Just Culture and Accountability

I am definitely capable of over thinking, of tying myself up in knots and being lost in the detail. And other times, I probably haven't thought enough. Recently, I identified just culture as a concept I hadn't really thought about in-depth.

In my mind, I thought I knew what a just culture was. I knew it was more than a simple no-blame policy. I knew it involved establishing what is acceptable and not acceptable behaviour. But that had been the limit of my thinking.

Dan Parsons 8/6/12 Dan Parsons 8/6/12

Logical Fallacies in the Safety Sphere

Sometimes I feel like I really missed out by not receiving a "classical" education. While I can probably live without the latin and greek philosophy, one area I've been keen to pick up is formal logic. The forming of a coherent and valid argument is a key skill which is, in my opinion, overlooked in safety management. Which is disappointing since making such an argument is at the heart of making a safety case.

I'm not going to tackle the subject of logic today. To be honest, I don't know enough about the overall concept. Instead, I'm going to focus on the typical failings present in a logical argument - the logical fallacies.

Image credit: Steve Johnson (via Pexels)

Dan Parsons 9/8/11 Dan Parsons 9/8/11

Obstacle Limitation Surface 3D Visualisation

Here is the product of a couple more nights drawing on my mac. They are the MOS 139 compliant (or there abouts) obstacle limitation surfaces for the main runway at Brisbane Airport.

Header image: Aleksandar Pasaric (via Pexels)