Ethics in aviaiton

Ethics are everything in aviation. They serve as the baseline between every interaction that pilots and aircrew have with their passengers, any organization or service they will work with, and each other. To me, aviation ethics are putting your own personal desires and laziness aside and having an ample amount of discipline to ensure the safety of all. Of course, the number one priority of all pilots and aircrew should be safety and without a concrete set of ethics, it would be impossible to maintain a safe environment.

We’ll go through why I believe that discipline to aviation ethics and why they both are incredibly important.

 

It is impossible to remember everything as you’re flying. Every checklist item, every part of the pre-flight inspection, or every incident response without looking at a checklist. After reading enough aircraft incident reports on general aviation incidents, complacency comes up as a fairly common trend for new pilots.  

 

While anecdotal, this graph shows the findings of many ASIs and thus the teachings of the FAAST, AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Organization), and many other flight school’s training. As people learn the skills required to fly, they quickly gain confidence in what they know before truly having the discipline to understand that they WILL forget things (Soekkha, 2020). According to the NTSB, general aviation flights are almost 213 times more likely to have a fatal incident occur than a scheduled flight operating under 14 CFR 121, which is the certification that most major commercial airlines operate under. (https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/Data_Stats.aspx) 

 

 


(The data listed above is the NTSB's projected accident information for this year based on trend analysis)


I believe that the data shows the difference between the two. I believe that the main difference between the two sets of data on the operator’s side of things is flight hours and training. In Aviation safety: Human factors, there is quite a bit of discussion of the standardization of airlines’ training and safety factors that influence my previously stated number and all of that links back to the increased professionalism and discipline that surrounds and defines the set of ethics that aviation professionals work under.



 

 

References

  • NTSB. (2020, September 2). Data & stats. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/Data_Stats.aspx.

  • Soekkha, H. M. (2020). Aviation safety: Human factors, system engineering, flight operations, economics, strategies, management. CRC Press. 

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