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NBAA News Bureau

Safety Town Hall Meeting Focuses On Threat and Error Management

ATLANTA, GA, September 26, 2007 –Today, Rick Longlot of the NBAA Safety Committee welcomed Dr. Durwood Heinrich, chief pilot for PetSmart Aviation, and Peter Stein, chief pilot for Johnson Controls, at the NBAA Safety Town Hall Meeting.

The one-hour session was led by Heinrich, who gave a PowerPoint presentation on threat and error management (TEM) for business aviation.

Being that the primary cause of aircraft accidents is flightcrew mistakes, the objective of TEM is to reduce human error in daily operations by identifying hazards, assessing risks, avoiding threat and containing end results.

TEM is a systems approach. “It’s a mindset,” Heinrich said. “Accurate decision-making is the primary key to a successful mission outcome.”
There are, however, strategies to reduce the number of threats and errors and increase awareness.

The presentation included an overview of safeguards, such as hardware and software that serve as an additional barrier to problems, external threats and error management, including examples of several TEM models.

Heinrich also noted that system failures contribute to accidents, but more latent failures than active failures in the system are to blame. Situation awareness, countermeasure and support are critical.

The future of TEM will focus on training, and crew resource management continues to be very important. The goal is to integrate TEM into formal simulator training. Measurement, a non-punitive approach to error and a TEM human factors checklist also are needed.

Peter Stein ended with an explanation of the TEM education initiative, a three-prong approach, which includes awareness, outreach and engagement. The initiative aims to have the broadest possible reach, including internationally, adding that webcasting is useful for this, and that NBAA’s Safety Committee is a partner on this front.

More information on TEM is available at the Technical Initiatives section of the Flight Safety Foundation web site at FlightSafety.org.