Gamers Going Airborne: Two Travel Events in Two Decades

By Geoffrey R McIntyre Ph D

Whenever 'rare' and 'preventable' tragic air travel events involving aircraft certified 'safe to fly' occur, pending formal accident investigation reports, mainstream media's experts rightly assure that US domestic travel has a very low accident rate. This essay proposes that the exclusion of manufacturing and operational data from the safety narrative, presents challenges to understanding how present and future risk develops. For example, that 'data-driven' low accident rate narrative excludes the staggering rise in near midair collisions and other ignored data, with potentially outsized consequences. This essay documented the specter of creeping accident recidivism; and transformational fleet groundings, that for the third time in four decades have questioned the behavior of the regulated and the regulator to determine how best to protect travelers.

Two extremely bizarre air travel events by avid video gamers, served as an allegory for the normalcy bias that flows from the US low accident rate, the consequences of unlearned lessons of air travel history and ignored facts from 1974 to 2018. When something bad happens, however rarely, the low accident rate is cited with great hubris. Yet, we know the limited value of 'a data-driven' narrative, that itself ignores inconvenient data. When neither manufacturers, nor safety oversight authorities, nor the flyers themselves, know what can possibly happen up there, it's a bad day for everyone So far in the new millennium, the specter of recurring similar air travel events, worldwide, has taken over 1,300 lives. Hauntingly, from 2008 - 2017, US airspace experienced a phenomenal rise in near midair collisions-operational data conveniently ignored by low accident rate devotees. The twin specters of creeping accident recidivism, and "an accident-free" mindset, challenges full understanding of how present and future risk develops. A theme underscored by all the other actors encountered, is that the rate hides more than it explains, misleads, and fails to protect travelers. For it's only by working back from hazard identification, best enables transformative, forward-looking, risk mitigation by corporate and independent government regulatory authorities. Worldwide air accident recidivism, and the rise in US near midair and other ignored events, are precautionary wakeup calls: identify system-wide, sleepwalking hazardous vectors and adjust the safety narrative to reality

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1644627833
• ISBN13: 9781644627839
• Release Date: April 2019
• Publisher: Page Publishing
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"