Nice comparison I think.....
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« Aviation is all about risk management. From A to Z. Design, Engineering, Construction, Maintenance, Training, Procedures, Techniques, Manuals: all of it involves a lot of Risks and Risk Management.
Taking a 120 tons aircraft designed, built and maintained by humans, filling its tanks with 70 tons of kerosene, its seats with 375 strange people and its cargo holds with 7 tons of luggage, cargo, including dangerous goods, taking off during a snow storm, on a contaminated runway ( ice or snow) with a strong gusty cross winds, flying it 4000 miles at night, in icing conditions, through a line of thunderstorms, in moderate turbulence, to another continent, through a sky crisscrossed with thousands of other aircraft, and landing it in a foreign airport blanketed in thick fog after spending a long sleepless night, involves the management of a lot of risks, risks that airlines, and airline personnel take every day.
Every action we take involves risk and risk management.
Yet there is always another option that may involve less risk: just cancelling the flight. Deplaning that problematic or passenger. Not taking the cargo.
But if airlines were to always cancel flights for snow, for ice, for cross-winds, for thunderstorms, for wind-shear, for turbulence, for freezing rain, for heavy traffic, for contaminated runways, for fog, for fatigue, for problematic passengers, for unusual cargo, for technical problems, we would be cancelling most flights, and we would be on the receiving end of millions of complaints, lawsuits and claims from angry customers. But we don't cancel unless we have to. We fly. We nearly always fly, regardless of what fate throws our way. And we do it safely, responsibly.
We learn to manage all of these risks in such a safe manner, and we do it so efficiently that airline flying is one of the safest activities on Earth.
• This level of safety is achieved using science, technology, training and procedures.
The Government of Canada now has to deal with a new risk called COVID-19.
It can either do like we do in the aviation industry, which is to evaluate and study the risks and use science, technology, training and procedures to manage the risks and carry on with the flight, or it can just decide not to have to deal with the risk, cancel the flight and send everyone home.
So far, they have decided to cancel all flights rather than manage the risks with technology and science based measures as we do in aviation.
This is killing our industry and our livelihoods. »
