Safety Versus Command - Understanding the difference
SAFETY VERSUS COMMAND AUTHORITY
Ready, fire, aim! Crew often hear the terms “safety” and “command,” but few truly know exactly what these mean or how great a role they play in creating both. It’s essential every crew chief know the difference between the two as well as the many hands-on ways it takes to promote both. A little reflection here will pay huge dividends by painting the big picture and even get us closer to both targets faster.
The FAA defines “command” as a pilot’s final authority and responsibility for the operation and safety of the aircraft and flight. Sounds official and final, but there’s much more to it. This legal definition loses some of its clarity when applied to balloons. Crew-less flights are truly rare, often lack the essential safety redundancy provides, and could easily be considered negligent or reckless in commercial ventures. No other class of aircraft relies on uncertified crew of volunteers for assembly, ground handling, launching, landing assistance, and disassembly. A pilot is legally responsible for actions – effective, ineffective, or even inactions – of others. Those others include trained crew as well as untrained bystanders pressed into service on the spot. Mishandling a crown/drop line or mismanaging “weight on” can complicate “command” and lead to FAA and civil actions against a pilot. Worst of all, what’s legal isn’t always safe and vice versa. Pilots often violate minimum safe altitudes to make approaches for landings, while using a tie-off is not required by any regulatory or industry publication.
“Safety” is – well, here’s the thing. Sadly, there’s more clarity and definition on competition rules than safety protocol, and most of that goes to pilots for launching. Safety is a pilot responsibility but precedes command (a pilot must first show minimal skill before being certified) and at time even supersedes it. There’s no consensus or even working definition of the term among the FAA, flight instructors, designated examiners, manufacturers, or insurance providers – those we’ve vested with this noble task. We know exactly what less-than-safe looks like: weather/wind lead to trouble, power line strikes cause most fatalities, passengers get hurt most often, accidents occur mostly on landing, etc. We just don’t yet have quite the right vision or game plan for staying out of trouble.
Both terms have large gray areas and overlap. Legally, ballooning is an individual event. Operationally – and to be safe – it’s a team effort. Pilot and crew conduct must reflect both realities. Rather than rewrite federal code or push for crew certification, defining and promoting safety might prove most useful. Many working definitions, though, lack in various ways. Simply not having an accident is impossibly vague and offers no prescriptions. Bringing everyone and everything home intact doesn’t work either; what pilot or insurance agent wouldn’t sacrifice a tether rope or envelope to keep a passenger alive and well? No current definition seems to prevent or minimize accidents.
A working definition which has served well for many pilots and crew is this:
SAFETY is the consistent and systematic prevention, avoidance, and management of all flight-related risks of any nature.
That includes crowd control, watching weather for changes, pulling a red line on squirrelly inflations when your pilot’s at the load ring, shutting down a fuel system in the event of a leak or small fire, checking out landing sites for your pilot, handling a drop line, or managing a power line strike scene while everyone onboard remains in the basket. A pilot may be responsible for these tasks, but the responsibility for carrying them out successfully may go to crew. No one is asking pilots to relinquish their command to crew or encourage back-seat micro-management; rather we all must admit that crew offer redundancy to the only balloon component that has none: the pilot. And no one argues the safety value of redundancy!
Besides outnumbering pilots 2 or 4:1, crew clearly become players and factors in the safety equation for a simpler reason: no one vested with ballooning’s safety is on hand for each of your flights. They only get involved before or after things go wrong, often much sooner or later, and offer no immediate remedy when trouble’s at hand. Who else knows your pilot’s routines, equipment, local conditions, and flying area better than you do and is on hand to catch things and interrupt events before they become accident chains and NTSB reports? While command must reside with the pilot, safety is much bigger and must truly become everyone’s business.
Here’s why. Stuff happens in ballooning, even when you’re not flying. The best time to prevent an accident is before it happens. The pain of discipline – paying attention and directing events, not simply reacting – is minimal compared to the pain of regret. Everyone around or in your basket is someone’s spouse, sibling, best friend, or colleague. Imagine how you’d feel if someone close to you was injured and you later learned someone else – beyond the pilot – could have prevented that. Even if your pilot does everything possible and legally, handling a crown line more effectively or being there on landing to add weight often means the difference between safety and anything less. You would expect nothing less in return for those close to you.
The other reason is strictly bottom line. Safety is cheap compared to the alternative. Incidents, accidents, and injuries are truly expensive. Doing things right the first time is truly cheaper in the long run. Consider the price tags on some common mishaps. Burned throat fabric from a mishandled crown line can cost a scrubbed flight ($300-1000 passenger revenue), a $2-400 repair, and lost time and travel costs. A hard landing with passenger injury may cost only a few hundred in medical expenses but also that nagging feeling your pilot gets for weeks hoping that ankle heals nicely and no lawsuits follow. A power line strike or fatality can easily cost 6-7 figures in injuries, compensation, claims, damages, and legal defenses not to mention how it’ll change your pilot’s view on flying. While these aren’t highly common, none are that uncommon, and it only has to happen once to you or someone you know to become very real and painful. And whether you see it or not, there’s a ripple effect throughout ballooning after every accident. Even if you only sport fly, there’s never a cheap mishap or a good time for one.
None of this is theoretical. Nothing is deadlier to pilots and passengers or more devastating to crew than a power line strike. A simple crew precaution of radioing your pilot anytime your balloon is below 100’ with line locations can prevent hitting wires. Forget the cell phone; any pilot would prefer hearing a short message versus fumbling to answer a phone while flying low. Just make the call – short and sweet (“power east of the road”) - but don’t expect a reply. It’s not required by the FAA (the call isn’t, but redundancy in every balloon component is). It’s not required to get a pilot’s certificate. Most pilots won’t ever expect it, but you’d be surprised how many get surprised by hidden lines. It doesn’t challenge or relinquish command. It’s just plain safe, and it’s really that simple.
Safety is all about risk management, tolerance, and mitigation. Safety is truly in the details, and crew often end up with those details and tasks in their hands or catch those subtle cues that precede mishaps. Before your next flight or flying season, sit down with your pilot and other crew to review some safety procedures and who does exactly what under what conditions. Some training might be required as well. If you see mist or rain on your windshield, radio your pilot. Learn when or how to pull a red line of your pilot’s at the parachute and the inflation gets out of hand (and when to let go if things get truly out of hand). Practice weight-on landings and drop line handling during a calm-wind tether. Get that first-aid training you’ve been putting off; spectators have saved balloonists’ lives when crew didn’t know CPR. Imagine how you’d feel if that was your pilot and you didn’t have the skills, then imagine yourself the person who knew how and acted. Which person do you want to be?
Nickel-and-diming yourself when it comes to safety usually means you’ll be quartered later – both literally and figuratively. Safety takes many more forms than command does and results from what crew do, don’t do, know, and don’t know. Plan for safety on every flight rather than take a let’s-see-what-happens attitude. Invest some of your time before you get wrapped up in another flying season to master the specific techniques you’ll need to prevent, avoid, and manage all flight-related risks of any nature for the kind of flying you do.