Learning from Mistakes

I read a lot of aviation magazines. In every one, you’ll find at least one column dedicated to reporting on accidents. These reports are fairly dry: a restatement of the facts issued by the various government agencies that investigate transportation problems. Depressingly, a large number end with the summary “pilot error.”

Are our pilots a bunch of cowboys, recklessly flying planes in to the ground? Quite the reverse, the vast majority are conservative, careful aviators. So why does “pilot error” figure so prominently?

The authorities quite rightly give the pilot of an aircraft ultimate authority over that aircraft’s operation. It’s up to the pilot to check the weather, the condition of the plane, the distribution of weight, the fuel required, and many other factors, all before setting foot inside the plane. Once flying, the pilot’s job continues, monitoring weather, fuel remaining, aircraft performance, navigation, collision avoidance: the list is long and complex.

It isn’t easy keeping all these factors balanced, particularly not when the weather is closing in, fuel is starting to look marginal, turbulence is jarring your teeth loose and you’re at the end of a long, exhausting day. And yet we all (quite rightly) expect our pilots to maintain a level of near perfection. So pilots, being human, make mistakes, and sometimes these mistakes have tragic consequences.

That’s where the accident reports come in. Pilots read them, and read them avidly. They aren’t reading to gloat. They’re reading to learn. The pilots they’re reading about are for the most part every bit as careful as they are, and yet still something went wrong. So pilots read the reports to find out what happened, and maybe to try to tune their personal procedures to stop it happening to them. By reading these reports, pilots improve both their own performance and aviation’s overall safety.

Computer programming is perhaps half the age of powered flight. We face different issues; our mistakes can cause inconvenience, but rarely loss of life. But perhaps still there’s something that programmers can learn from the attitudes of pilots. Is it conceivable that we might one day have a way for developers to report problems during development to some anonymous forum so that others might learn? Could we start to use our own history as a tool to help us all improve?