When Every Second Counts:

Best Practice for Aviation

Businesses Responding
to Accidents
 When Every Second Counts: Best Practice
for Aviation Businesses Responding to
Accidents
Although accidents are thankfully becoming less common in aviation,
one thing is absolutely certain: aviation operators will always need to be
prepared with a robust incident response system so they can react swiftly
and appropriately if the worst were to happen. In developing such a system,
operators ensure they’re doing everything possible to protect both their
people — pilots and customers — and their businesses. In this eBook, we’ll
run through best practices when it comes to responding to accidents and
safety incidents in aviation.

Read on to learn how you can prepare and respond.

Causes, types, and volume of accidents in

aviation
First, let’s talk about the types of accidents that occur in aviation to get
a better feel for what we’re preparing for and responding to. Causes of
aviation accidents are grouped into several different categories, but for the
purposes of this ebook, we can define them as:

Technical. This includes accidents caused by damage to or malfunctioning

of one of the technical components of the aircraft. Engine failure, in-flight fires,
fuel exhaustion or starvation, and undercarriage malfunction are examples.

Human error. Human error encompasses anything a pilot, air traffic

controller, or passenger might do to result in an incident.

Weather-related or external. Fog, wind, storms, collision

with another airborne object or animal — all of these fit into this category.

Criminal. This one’s pretty self-explanatory, but it includes bombings,

terrorist attacks, hijackings, sabotage, and shootdowns.

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These causes can lead to a few different types of accidents, such as:

- Collisions
- Crashes
- Controlled landings onto land or water
- Runway incursions or overruns
- Aircraft disappearances

While 2017 marked the safest year on record for both commercial and general
aviation, accident prevention remains the key area of risk management for
operators.

The impact of accidents on your business

Even though aviation is becoming continually safer and fatality rates are
steadily dropping, accidents are always a possibility. Let’s talk a bit about
the impact of an accident on your business — in other words, what you’re
doing your best to avoid by building a robust incident-preparation system.

First, there’s the obvious financial cost — the money you’ll have to spend
to repair or replace broken aircraft and equipment. Depending on the size
of your business, your level of insurance, and the resources you have at
hand, this may or may not be an insurmountable cost.

There’s also the immeasurable emotional impact of any injury or loss

incurred during the accident, and the reputational damage that will almost
inevitably attach itself to your name and business.

Depending on the nature of the accident — Was it a crash? Was it caused

by human error or an external influence? Were there any fatalities? — the
financial, emotional, and reputational impacts may together contrive to be
enough for business failure.

Now, we’ll talk about how to prepare your business for the event of an
accident.

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 Preparing your business to respond to
emergencies

As usual when planning, it’s an excellent idea to make a checklist. What

precautions do you take on a daily basis to prevent accidents, and what will
you do, step by step, if an emergency occurs? Your emergency-preparation
checklist should include these precautions, as well as the immediate actions
you’ll take on the heels of an accident. Here are some things to consider
including in your checklist (you can also download our Safety and Survival
checklist here if you haven’t already!):

- Ensure all pilots always perform pre-flight checks and that they
practice emergency procedures in the aircraft on a regular basis.
- Run through emergency-situation protocols with your staff on a
regular basis (i.e. monthly).
- Make sure your safety tools are working properly (technology, GPS
tracking, etc.).
- Ensure your pilots are trained in first aid, with current first-aid
certifications.
- Always be sure your aircraft first-aid kits and survival kits are
comprehensive and complete.

Another big part of preparing your business for the event of an accident
is ensuring your staff have the proper response training. This includes
everything from the logistical aspects of a rescue or response operation
(Who needs to be called? Which authorities need to be alerted? When do
family members need to be notified?) to things such as providing emotional
support and keeping calm. Depending on the size of your operation, you
may want to delegate tasks amongst your staff and ensure each person
knows exactly what they’re responsible for should an incident demand
attention.

And the third prong of your emergency preparation system? Equipping your
people and aircraft with technology and tools that will boost their safety
and help them communicate and survive in the event of an accident, when
every second counts. Real-time flight tracking software such as Spidertracks
gives you the ability to know the exact location of an aircraft at any given
time — so if, say, one of your fleet crashes, you’ll know precisely where it is
and be able to accurately direct emergency personnel, saving valuable time
and possibly saving a life as well.

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Spidertracks also offers communication features that enable you to text or
speak with your pilots no matter where they are in the world and regardless of
whether or not they’re able to take advantage of traditional communication
infrastructure. (Head here to read more about how one particular feature
called Spidertxt 2.0 can act as part of your emergency management
system.) Imagine the value this communication capability provides during
an emergency situation; you’d have a direct line of communication to figure
out what’s happened and whether or not it necessitates an immediate and
urgent response.

In the event of an emergency: the Golden Hour

principle

The most commonly used principle when it comes to accident response in

aviation is the ‘Golden Hour.’

The Golden Hour is the idea that chances of survival in the event of injury
or emergency decrease exponentially once an hour has elapsed. In other
words, every second counts; your rescue operation must begin immediately
— and ideally, it’ll be completed within the hour or at least well underway.

In aviation, the concept of the Golden Hour is useful as a general rule for
rescue operations as it is, of course, ideal to undertake and complete a rescue
mission as soon as possible following an accident. This tight timeframe
means, as we just said, that every second counts; instead of focusing on
searching for your aircraft, you want to spend the Golden Hour rescuing,
which is why it’s imperative that you already know where your aircraft was at
the time of the accident.

We can further illustrate the Golden Hour principle by looking to the

technical side of search and rescue. When an aircraft goes down, your
search area is a circle (defined as πr²) around the last known location of that
aircraft. By virtue of the equation, this means that your search area increases
exponentially with time — so the lower the interval of minutes between
knowing where an aircraft is (in other words, the higher the frequency of
location tracks) and when it goes down, the smaller your search area will be.

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 For example: using position reporting over VHF at 10-minute intervals for
an aircraft traveling at 120 knots will result in an immense search area of
1,257 square miles — about the same size as the U.S. state of Rhode Island.
But if, say, you’re working with 2-minute intervals (as Spidertracks’s system
does), then the search area would be an infinitely more manageable 50
square miles. The point? When the interval between the last known location
and the time of an accident is shorter, you can decrease your search area
exponentially.

The best way to follow the Golden Hour principle is to ensure your aircraft
is equipped with a real-time GPS tracker that keeps constant tabs on your
aircraft’s location. You can even take your emergency-preparation system
to the next level with a feature such as Spidertracks’s Spider Watch, which
automatically alerts your designated contacts if 15 minutes elapse without
communication with the system.

Other things you must achieve during Golden Hour include connecting with
authorities so they can mount the appropriate official emergency response
and getting in touch with the families of your pilot(s) and any passengers
aboard to inform them of the situation.

Post-accident analysis for prevention and

improvement

Perhaps the most important thing you’ll do once an accident occurs (after
rescuing your pilot and passengers, of course) is figure out what went
wrong and how you can prevent it in the future. This will involve analyzing
all decisions made before the accident, during the incident, and after the
rescue response. You’ll need to interview your pilot and passengers (provided
they’re in an appropriate condition), review the flight routes, and identify
any improvements you can make so the same situation doesn’t arise again.

Wrapping up
We designed this eBook to give you a better idea of how you can best
prepare for and respond to an emergency situation or accident, where
every second counts. We hope you found it helpful.

Find more resources to help your aviation business, or schedule a demo of

our technology.

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 About Spidertracks
Spidertracks is the industry leader in satellite tracking devices for aircraft
and smarter aircraft management. Designed and built in New Zealand,
Spiders continue to push the standard of real-time aircraft tracking. More
than 6,000 customers around the world rely on Spidertracks to manage
their fleets and ensure the safety of their people.

Try the Demo

or visit
spidertracks.com/demo

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