Professional Documents
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743 3 а-у
743 3 а-у
The world’s flight safety community has been badly hurt in the last few weeks by accidents that
took nearly 750 lives. In this unprecedented psychodrama, long before final investigation reports
are completed, it is obvious that technical issues are not the only cause. At the same time, it
would not make sense to solely accuse human factors; we all share responsibility in a wide-
ranging loss of vigilance (обачність). Flight safety has never been better, but recent accidents
have revealed unacceptable weaknesses, including a failure of threat and risk assessment and
poor pilot training.
The worst case is the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash in Ukraine. This was not the first
time that an airliner was hit by a surface-to-air missile. And this tragedy was not only related to
aviation safety, or security.
Looking beyond the outraged comments, we don’t need the International Civil Aviation
Organization, International Air Transport Association and other trade groups to express
indignation or a lack of understanding. As the European Cockpit Association stressed in a
strongly worded (викладений) statement issued in late July: “In hindsight (у ретроспективі),
flying civilian aircraft over an area where powerful anti-aircraft [missiles] capable of bringing
down an airliner at cruising altitude are in active use is not acceptable; so the question is what
went wrong and how do we fix it?”
Reading newspapers and watching television news programs was enough to make the point,
without any help from intelligence experts or warning given by Notams*. Airlines—all airlines
—simply should strictly avoid flying over war zones. Such preventive measures make flight
times longer and involve increased fuel consumption, but make sense. More than two decades
ago, during the first Balkan war, Malaysia’s flights between Europe and Kuala Lumpur departed
from the usual flight plan day after day, as did aircraft operated by other carriers. This time,
apparently, operations managers were too accustomed to such dangers or underestimated the
threat. Such behavior can be characterized as a loss of vigilance, inappropriate risk assessment,
or a lack of common sense.
At the other end of the spectrum, the crash of a TransAsia Airways ATR 72-500 at Magong,
Taiwan, in low visibility, reminds us of the true danger of non-precision approaches (неточний
захід на посадку) in bad weather. The airline’s in-house (власні) regulations were rapidly
revised, visibility requirements raised and, in case of doubt, pilots encouraged to return to the
airport or divert to another destination.
* НОТАМ (англ. NOtice To AirMen, NOTAM) - оперативно поширювана інформація
(сповіщення) про зміни в правилах проведення та забезпечення польотів і
аеронавігаційної інформації. НОТАМ містить повідомлення про всі поправки, тимчасові
або постійні, які не були включені в останню збірку аеронавігаційної інформації (AIP).