The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a video that highlights the crucial role that procedural compliance plays in commercial aviation safety.
The nine-minute video, released Dec. 3, 2015, uses findings from several commercial airplane crashes to show how deviation from standard operating procedures can initiate a chain of events that can lead to devastating consequences for innocent people.
“Aviation flight operating procedures are developed and refined to provide repeatable steps for safely flying a plane in order to minimize the risk of an accident,” said NTSB Chairman Christopher A. Hart. “So it’s disheartening when we learn from our investigations that the very procedures that are designed to ensure safety were deviated from, leading to a preventable accident.”
Among the accidents highlighted in the video was the 2013 crash of Asiana flight 214 in San Francisco, UPS flight 1354 in Birmingham, Alabama in 2013 that killed the two pilots on board, and Colgan Air 3207 that crashed near Buffalo, New York, in 2009, of which Clifford Law Offices represented a number of families who lost loved ones aboard that aircraft.
Although the video was targeted at pilots, Hart said, “We hope that this short video will be used by airlines, regulators, pilots and aviation safety professionals to reinforce just how critical procedural compliance is to flight safety. All play a role in ensuring aviation safety – not just pilots.”