Human Performance Principles Risk Trade-offs Within Aviation Safety

Having spent a considerable time in Aviation, specifically, the last 10 years in a ground handling environment managing quality and safety, one of the Human performance principles which intrigues me is how people assess risks and make trade-offs.

Ground handling activities are performed in a very complex and multi-influencing environment where an individual performing a certain task requires interaction with numerous system components. It is a known fact that humans are considered complex and human performance and decision making is based on contextual operational influences.

One of the key challenges faced by personnel at the ramp which I have observed, is the extent of their decision making within the operational context threshold. These decisions rely heavily on the balance between production goals (business) and protection goals (safety), and whether the resulting optimum outcome considers both the production demands and the safety objectives. This is the big challenge, and precisely where difficult operational risk trade-offs occur, for the obvious reason that, risks are perceived by individuals, based on their definitive characteristics and their ability to take decisions, whether the output of such decisions have a positive or a negative impact on the result of the process. ?

ICAO while explaining the principles of Human Performance have aptly analysed that for an individual performing an activity within the ramp environment, these conflicting goals can sometime translate into difficult operational trade-offs where conflicts occur between efficiency against thoroughness, speed against accuracy and cost against benefits. Human decision making in such a scenario often positions itself at this intersection of production and safety and hence leads to a compromise at times. Therefore, the skill required to manage this compromise between production and safety is the need of the hour which comes through experience and exposure to aviation and this, I feel, should be the core competency which we need to build into the teams.

In order to have an efficient, reliable, and safe conduct of operations, considering that such risk trade-offs are inevitable, the organization should initiate a methodical performance program to assess human decision-making ability when subjected to the dynamics of operational conditions in a constantly changing environment where operational demand, customer expectation, resource challenges and management expectations are well balanced and understood, through predictive observations and discussions involving core operational frontline teams.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.?

#groundhandling #aviationsafety #airline #airport #transom #omanairports #caaoman