Nov. 12, 2024
Under the theme, “Elevate your Influence,” the 2024 Bombardier Safety Standdown opened with a focus on business aircraft pilots and flight crews sharing their experiences and lessons to improve safety, and continually championing proficiency as a lifelong avocation.
NBAA President and CEO Ed Bolen’s opening remarks highlighted the need for aviators to pay forward on experiences that have influenced their approach to safety, through peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, not only at the annual Bombardier Safety Standdown, but also at the safety-focused events offered as part of during NBAA’s Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (NBAA-BACE).
“All of these [events] are intellectually stimulating and inspiring, but they all need to be shared,” Bolen said. “Take what we’ve learned, apply what we’ve learned. Help others learn it and apply it as well, because it’s only by working together that we move our industry forward.”
Chris Milligan, Bombardier’s vice president for preowned aircraft services and lead organizer of the three-day event, agreed with Bolen, adding: “The next few days provide us an invaluable learning opportunity to come together to share our thoughts and our direction of what we’re experiencing, and to learn from each other.”
Milligan, Bolen and other speakers noted that the unique, organic experiences at in-person events like the standdown are increasingly important as automation, augmentation and artificial intelligence become prevalent on business aircraft flight decks. Those and other safety innovations can be lifesaving, but also isolating in the cockpit environment, making interactive learning an ever-more necessary complement to scenarios involving a human-technology interface.
“We are at a crossroads again in aviation,” said Franco Pietracupa, flight operations demo pilot for Bombardier. “What we’ll see in the next five years will be almost mindboggling.”
The Importance of Training and ‘Hypervigilance’
In a rousing, baseball-focused presentation, industry safety advocate Dr. Tony Kern highlighted the importance of “hypervigilance,” or expecting abnormal things to occur and being adequately prepared to contend with them.
“That is a core competency,” he said, playing the 2016 viral video of former Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Evan Longoria’s barehanded catch of an errant fly ball while being interviewed by an ESPN sports reporter, sparing her from serious injury.
“That ball was coming straight for her forehead,” Kern said. “Our [own] field of play has always been dangerous. Never forget that an airplane is an aluminum eggshell [that we] take to altitudes where a time of useful consciousness can be measured in seconds. We call that normal, right? Yeah, that’s not normal.”
The ability to call upon training to react to unforeseen emergencies may have also saved the lives of the captain and first officer involved in the fiery Aug. 5, 2024, runway overrun of a business jet at New York’s Jamestown Airport (JHW) following a cascading electrical issue shortly after departure.
“I had my breath taken away from me,” recounted contract pilot Kevin Van Splunder, who was in the right seat for that flight. “I’ve learned, I’ve applied and now I’m here to share it.”
Van Splunder recalled the “old codgers” in his flight department teaching him to identify every switch by feel and memorize the distance to every exit on the aircraft. “Because of my training,” he added, “I knew exactly how many feet, how many steps it was going to take for me to get to the emergency exit door.”
International Business Aviation Council Ltd.