I was at a Safety Conference hosted by a group of Psychologists. Now you can imagine the wide variety of insights to human behavior – it was an eye-opening experience in many ways. One discussion by Dr. Tim Ludwig started out like this… “What would you do if I had a bomb and placed it here in the center of this table?”
The responses were fairly uniform. The “bomb” was a clear and present danger, we all flinched -some of us outwardly and some of us inwardly- but we all clearly registered the threat. He removed his visual aid (he picked up a water bottle for the demonstration) and seemed to wander off course. In a somewhat irritating and off-handed manner he asked how many of us had flown to the conference? Most of us had.
“How did you feel sitting next to a device that has more energy than a small bomb?” he asked. Then, the connection was made. Everyone paused and he began to talk about our perception of risk and how that impacts safety.
I do a lot of traveling and a lot of risk analysis in my work. Our airline industry is safe and has the statistics to prove it. I sleep quite soundly on my late night flights.
After I returned from the conference I found a photo of an incident that occurred in flight that resulted in damage to an engine cowling of a medium size airliner.
Here’s what it looked like out the passenger window.
The aircraft depicted landed safely with no damage to the engine. If you want more specifics about the engine cowling event get in touch with me.
The photo struck me because, with the cowling peeled away, the engine “looks” more risky/scary. Perhaps if all engines were exposed like this one, we would be more conscious of the potential for explosion that exists on every flight. What is your perception of risk?
Food for thought.
Cheers,
Loyd
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