One Level of Safety - What It Really Means

[from the archives 10/19/2013] by Joseph F. Corrao

Some rainy day when the beds are made, the windows are washed, the dishes are all put away and the dog's been walked, if you have an hour to kill and your blood pressure is under control, try Googling the phrase "one level of safety" and have a peek at how Washington works.  You'll find the phrase used to justify more stringent regulations, less stringent regulations, not changing any regulations, changing a bunch of regulations, committees to study regulations, and getting rid of committees to study regulations.  Clearly, this is a very useful phrase.   

Advocates use the phrase to push for changing -- and not changing -- whatever they're being paid to change -- and not change.  Pundits use the phrase to explain why the Federal Aviation Administration does -- and doesn't do -- whatever the FAA might be doing or not doing that day.  And us folks in the great uncharted expanse Beyond The Beltway, we think it means that aviation regulations help keep everyone equally safe.  Or something like that.  

One way to tame this wild phrase is to understand that it has content that makes sense; its more than just a slogan that anyone can grab and use anytime it sounds good -- and it always sounds good, doesn't it?  Who wouldn't want "one level of safety?"  (As long as its not one really low level....)  It just sounds fair.  

So what does it mean?  Does it mean that everyone has to comply with the same regulatory requirements?  Or does it mean something else?  

Let's suppose that the FAA -- the Federal Agricultural Agency -- makes a regulation that all farmers have to keep their goats inside fenced areas all the time.  If all goat farms are on level ground, then all the fences would have to be the same height to keep all the goats in; if one farmer used a tall fence and one used a short fence, the goats inside the short fence would be more likely to jump over it and get out -- there would be two levels of goat safety.  Figure 1 illustrates this condition.  

However, if one goat farm is on top of a sharp mountain and another in a steep valley, then there would be two levels of safety if all the fences were the same height, because the goats on the mountaintop would have an advantage in jumping the fence.  Stated another way, to keep all the goats in, the farm on the mountaintop would need taller fences than the farm in the steep valley.  This condition is illustrated in Figure 2.  

A guiding rule results from this observation: If conditions vary among industry segments, regulations that apply to that industry must vary to take variations among segments into account.  

Back to aviation.  For a lot of reasons having legal and historical roots going as far back as 500 years -- and philosophical roots going back thousands of years more -- modern law expects transportation operators to transport people without causing -- or even permitting -- them to be harmed, while it grants people minding their own business greater freedom as long as they don't hurt anyone else.  Two key concepts that express this idea in aviation regulation are "operational control" and "stringency of regulation."  

"Operational control" means the degree to which the people on the airplane control operation of the airplane.  Pilots flying themselves, exercizing the privileges of recreational, sport and private pilots, have great control over their operations, while passengers in airliners have little control over the operation of the airliners in which they ride.  Charter passengers have more control over where the flight originates, where it goes and when it operates than airline passsengers, but not as much as pilots flying themselves and their passengers.  

"Stringency of regulation" refers to the degree to which the regulation, rather than the pilot or operator, determines how flights will be conducted.  The more stringent the regulation, the greater degree of control is lodged in the regulation rather than the operator.  Regulatory stringency is intended to safeguard passengers first because they have least operational control, then employees because they have some operational control, then pilots and operators because they have greatest operational control.  Good regulations strike a good balance between legal protection of persons who have little control and freedom of persons who have control.  Figure 3 illustrates these relationships.  

(For discussion of the nomenclature used in Figure 3, see "Right Words Make Right Regs" in the Spring, 2012 issue of General Aviation Security magazine.)

Clearly, to achieve "one level of safety," regulations that substitute the judgment of rule makers for that of pilots and aircraft operators must reflect variations in conditions and circumstances, such as operational control; if one rule is applied across the board, the result will be various levels of safety caused by applying the same rule to various conditions and circumstances.  When regulations are intelligently tailored to the segments of the industry to which they apply, there will be several different regulations, each applying to a segment of the industry that differs in a meaningful way from other segments, resulting in one level of safety.  

Recognizing that the phrase "one level of safety" has meaning that makes sense should help us distinguish sound arguments about aviation safety regulation from posturing that sounds good but won't achieve desirable goals.  Understanding the content of "one level of safety" should help us separate the pundits who know what they're talking about from those who are just talking.  

And the same holds true for security.  Although the phrase "one level of security" has been rare in analyses of aviation security, it is not unknown, and regardless of whether the phrase is used commonly or rarely, the logic applies: one approach to aviation security regulation cannot achieve desirable effects when applied across the board to the gloriously wide variety of conditions and circumstances that make up the aviation industry.  Any regulation that seeks to apply strategies common in, say, the airline environment, to, let's say, non-scheduled non-commercial aviation, is doomed to fail and risks harming the aviation it seeks to secure.