Human error to blame for air accidents

By RANDALL SMITH 

Indian sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik puts the final touches to his sand sculpture portraying two missing aircraft, Air Asia QZ8501 and Malayasia Airlines MH370 on Golden Sea Beach at Puri, some 65 kms east of Bhubaneswar on December 29, 2014. 

In Summary, As technology has moved forward, one thing has remained unchanged: Human judgment.

• Today’s pilots are not as well-versed as their predecessors. 

The horrible crash of another passenger jet from Malaysia is raising the perennial question of our times: How could this happen?

We are living in a time when we are used to planes taking off and landing without incident.

In my youth, I remember dozens of tragic crashes, some of which I covered as a reporter.

But airline accidents have been reduced to rarities in recent years.

An aerospace engineer recently told me that the reason is because of dramatic improvement in avionics.

That includes everything from more powerful engines to dynamic computers that are programmed to find a solution to every imaginable problem.

Even the structure of the aircraft can handle horrific weather scenarios.

But one thing has remained unchanged: Human judgment. That is key in the speculation about this spring’s loss of a Malaysian Boeing 777.

A suicidal pilot apparently flew the aircraft into one of ocean’s deepest crevices. A second Boeing 777 was brought down by a missile over eastern Ukraine — fired by someone who apparently thought it was a military aircraft.

Not surprisingly, there’s speculation that pilot judgment may have played a role in this week’s accident. Other theories are also being tested; a bomb, a freakish weather event and computer failure.

But human error remains the top suspect. Today’s pilots are not as well-versed as their predecessors. They have also come to depend too much on their computers.

And this trend is widespread. In a few years, cars will drive themselves, doctors will grow skin, livers and other human organs. Meat and vegetables will be much larger and packed with vitamins.

Already, these changes are reversing population predictions for the world. Because we will all be living longer, humanity will continue to multiply until at least 2100.

That means we will be depending on yet-conceived technology to eat, drink, build and warm our homes.

So as we make our New Year’s wishes, think about this:  Everything that we accomplish is worthless unless we can exercise good human judgment.

We tend to drift toward what is easy and do not nurture critical skills.

I have a friend who wants to live 2014 over again. She wishes that she could go back in time to tell her husband to see the doctor. He died tragically and suddenly of a heart attack.

I wish that I had told him the same thing.

I have another friend who is travelling the world at the moment, inspiring research around green nanotechnology. 

His efforts, which have the potential to save millions of lives, depend heavily on the common sense of financiers.

PERSONAL CHOICE

There are some things in life that we cannot avoid, such as those ill-fated passengers on AirAsia this week. There are some things that can’t be relived, such as the death of my friend.

But there are many — much more — outcomes that are based on nurturing our human judgment skills. Our success in 2015 will depend on personal choices.  To all who read this column, I am grateful. 

My prayer is that we will all spend our time in 2015 in ways that move humanity forward.

rsmith4825@gmail.com