Safety topics

Abstract

A summary of the UK Flight Safety Committee's recent Ramp Safety Seminar by Captain Harry Hopkins establishes some important trends and conclusions from the intensely interesting papers. The British Airways figures seem to show a 30 per cent increase in the last four years, but both British Airways and Aer Lingus remarked that if reporting improves then the statistics appear to get worse. This makes it difficult to assess exactly what is going on, but certainly the significance of ramp incidents and ramp safety is not decreasing. The amazing thing seems to be that the costs in total, which we now agree are pretty substantial, appear not to have been given a great deal of consideration. When you think that world‐wide, we are talking in terms of the whole cost of 15 Boeing 747–400s per year it puts it into context. If we lost even just the hulls of 15 747–400s people would be jumping up and down, so surely there is a very large issue here. I will not sum this cost up, but I think you can draw your own conclusions from this seminar. Whatever the individual airline's costs they are often remaining hidden and awareness is not high enough; so seemingly minor ramp incidents with accident and cost potential are being ignored — because of the lower status that ramp safety might assume, compared to flight safety.

Citation

(1995), "Safety topics", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 67 No. 4, pp. 30-32. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb037588