FT.com / Comment / Opinion - The dangers of excessive air safety

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a585a682-4c6f-...ab49a.html Wrote:FT.com / Comment / Opinion - The dangers of excessive air safety

The ban on air travel in response to the ash cloud over Europe illustrates the pitfalls of preventive action. The ban – now partially lifted – was recommended by Eurocontrol, European governments’ air safety organisation, in response to the meteorological assessment of volcano ash in the air and its known risks to the safety of air travel. ...

Looking at the sheer scope of the ban and its effects, it is statistically certain to have cost numerous lives. Patients could not attend scheduled operations, nurses and doctors could not return to their jobs, while stress and tiredness has directly caused heart attacks and encouraged other illnesses. On top of that are the inevitable accidents caused by thousands of tired people driving unfamiliar rental cars thousands of miles through foreign countries.

It is difficult to put a number to each of these costs, but they are measurable and certain, whereas the risk of an aircraft crashing is uncertain. It is, of course, rational and responsible to consider the risk of lives being lost as a result of volcanic ash shutting down aircraft turbines.

But the widely distributed maps of volcano ash clouds over Europe do not answer the crucial question: how certain are uncertain risks? What is the probability of an air crash and does it vary according to the concentration of volcano ash? If so, at what level?

The answer is important, as it enables the costs of preventive action to be balanced against the risks such action is designed to prevent. ...

The problem is partly human psychology, partly fragmented politics. We tend to overestimate the vivid and dramatic risks, and underestimate the less emotive, less visible, yet statistically more likely, risks. ...

The political problem is the fragmentation of decision-making on risks. If one puts air-safety experts and transport ministers in charge, they will make all efforts to prevent aircraft accidents, with little regard for the costs and risks they create through substitute journeys.

This is an interesting discussion of Risk Management, which itself is a pretty interesting topic. The linked article also touches on pandemics, terrorism, and the Iraq war, but has much broader implications.

I wonder what caused the most concern - the possibility of loss of life and assets, or the ensuing lawsuits?

Same thing in the climate questions.
Scientists/Environmentalists are only concerned with change from status quo... not how much it costs to correct it or the possibility that a single volcano can change all of their conclusions.

That's a key concern - liability - and not just in terms of lawsuits, but also political liability and/or accountability for bureaucrats and regulators. It's hard to say after the fact that yes, we knew that planes may crash, but had to balance those 200 lives against the 800 that would have died in car crashes if we had grounded flights.

It would be interesting to see what the airlines would've done if they had not been grounded by regulators. They have no interest in those that may die in car crashes.

(04-21-2010 12:44 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  Same thing in the climate questions.
Scientists/Environmentalists are only concerned with change from status quo... not how much it costs to correct it or the possibility that a single volcano can change all of their conclusions.

One would expect that volcanic ash would factor into their models...

I didn't read the entire article yet, but going from Owls quote I have issue with this assessment:

Quote:Looking at the sheer scope of the ban and its effects, it is statistically certain to have cost numerous lives. Patients could not attend scheduled operations, nurses and doctors could not return to their jobs, while stress and tiredness has directly caused heart attacks and encouraged other illnesses. On top of that are the inevitable accidents caused by thousands of tired people driving unfamiliar rental cars thousands of miles through foreign countries.

I reject the assertion that the ban is responsible for any lost lives. Two things come to mind: responsibility and preventative action. Eurocontrol had the responsibility for safety of air travel and took preventative action to stop a loss of material and persons from the hazards of volcanic ash. Drivers who may have been killed in a crash due to fatigue are still individually responsible (deciding to drive) and failed to take preventative action (study maps, get rest, etc.). Their decision making was independent of the ban. Trying to create a long chain of speciously related events is a weak attempt to remove individual responsibility for poor decision-making.

In an overall picture: I don't know how it works in the commercial industry, but at the fundamental levels of aviation (which I have finally started! Dang Navy backlog!) final flight safety falls on the shoulders of the pilot. If he does not feel that the flight can be made safely, then they have the right and responsibility to issue a no-go. I wonder what percentage of pilots did not feel safe enough to fly in these conditions that they could counter the airlines from demanding they fly and if the pilots have any legal protections. On an additional side note, I found it was rather ironic though that I began studying weather, notably volcanic debris, at the same time that this stuff went down.

I guess what you have issue with is the wording or definition of responsibility. Viewed as a decision tree,

grounding flights --> more people will die on the roads due to car crashes
not grounding flights --> people may possibly die in plan crashes caused by ash

So, is the decision maker responsible for the deaths in car crashes due if they ground flights? Perhaps not, but they must make the decision with the knowledge that it will happen or they are not acting responsibly. This opens up another discussion about ethics and what choices people will make given various dilemmas and why they make the choice in one scenario versus another even when the outcome will be the same. (lame example: a baby is in front of the path of a speeding bus and the driver doesn't see it. You have the chance to save the baby, but know with certainty that the bus driver will see you and swerve, killing into oncoming traffic, killing the driver of one car and injuring the 20 bus passengers. Do you save the baby or let the bus run over it?).

Nobody in the airline industry can be held accountable if people die driving instead. No one was forcing people to fly somewhere in the first place.

In your example, you really wouldn't have time to think about it, but it's either you do nothing since you don't want to get killed, or you grab the baby and hope you're not killed (or perhaps the baby is saved) in the process. Then the decision shifts to the bus driver - does he hit you or swerve into oncoming traffic?

(04-21-2010 02:06 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  Nobody in the airline industry can be held accountable if people die driving instead. No one was forcing people to fly somewhere in the first place.

In your example, you really wouldn't have time to think about it, but it's either you do nothing since you don't want to get killed, or you grab the baby and hope you're not killed (or perhaps the baby is saved) in the process. Then the decision shifts to the bus driver - does he hit you or swerve into oncoming traffic?

The more typical formulation of the problem avoids the possibility of decision shifting to the driver. Probably the classic example invloves trains & switches.

Scenario 1: You are standing near a fork in the tracks. A train is approaching & will hit five people standing on the right fork unless you pull the switch, forcing the train onto the left fork where there is a single person on the track. Should you pull the switch, saving five but killing one in the process?

It's extended by an admittably quite unrealistic modification to further explore beliefs.

Scenario 2: You are standing near a train track with another person (a stranger). A train is approaching which will hit five people standing in the tracks. If you push the person in front of the train, he will be killed but it will stop before hitting the five (you aren't big enough to stop the train if you jump yourself). Should you push the stranger in front of the train, saving five but killing one in the process?

Most people (as confirmed by experimental philosophers - yes, they do exist) will choose to pull the switch in Scenario 1 but not push the stranger in front of the train in Scenario 2, even though the outcome is identical.

As to the original article (I didn't register so I'm just going by what's posted here), I'm not convinced by their risk calculus. The doctors & nurses who couldn't return home would almost certainly have arranged for someone to cover for them. While some non-essential appointments may have been canceled, it's hard to believe that there was no one to cover any emergencies that might come up. Similarly, how many people fly right before an operation needed to save their life? The stress related heart attacks seems like baseless spectulation - I know I would have just extended my vacation (for a couple of days after they said it was ok to fly to let the madhouse calm down).

The most compelling case is for the car accidents, but is there really any data to suggest that it's more dangerous to drive on unfamiliar roads? It seems like most auto accidents that I'm aware of are a result of alcohol, recklessness, or inattention, not unfamiliarity.

(04-21-2010 02:06 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  Nobody in the airline industry can be held accountable if people die driving instead. No one was forcing people to fly somewhere in the first place.

(04-21-2010 02:06 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  In your example, you really wouldn't have time to think about it, but it's either you do nothing since you don't want to get killed, or you grab the baby and hope you're not killed (or perhaps the baby is saved) in the process. Then the decision shifts to the bus driver - does he hit you or swerve into oncoming traffic?

Only because it's a lame example that I just made up. Assume the bus were computer controlled and you take "know with certainty" at face value. It's a dilemma because you know someone is going to get killed and/or harmed and you have a choice of who it will be.

Back to the real world, whoever made the policy/regulatory choice to ground the planes instead of let them operate made a choice that inevitably resulted in some incremental amount of deaths in Europe, job losses worldwide, and possible bankruptcies. Couch that however you will, but the connection between the choice and the consequences remains.

(04-21-2010 03:02 PM)jh Wrote:  As to the original article (I didn't register so I'm just going by what's posted here), I'm not convinced by their risk calculus.

This is a good point. It was the Financial Times and, as economists will, their argument is summarized thusly:

Quote:It is difficult to put a number to each of these costs, but they are measurable and certain, whereas the risk of an aircraft crashing is uncertain.

By way of example, this kind of risk is measurable and fairly certain - "Patients could not attend scheduled operations".

It's kind of like a joke I was told by a mathematician in college. An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician stay overnight in a hotel. The engineer is awoken first by a fire on the wall of his hotel room. He looks, sees a fire extinguisher, does a quick calculation, and sprays side-to-side, across the wall until the fire is put out just as he runs out of fire extinguisher. The physicist wakes up, does a quick calculation, sprays in a complex pattern, and puts the fire out with 1/2 of the extinguisher left to spare. The mathematician wakes up, sees the extinguisher, does a calculation, declares "there exists a solution" and goes back to sleep.

For the purposes of argument, it doesn't really matter if the author is correct in the certainty of more deaths due to the specified scenarios. But, there are similar circumstances in which policy makers almost certainly act out of moral cowardice in choosing the greater of two evils for superficial reasons.

I45owl Wrote:It would be interesting to see what the airlines would've done if they had not been grounded by regulators. They have no interest in those that may die in car crashes.

A single automobile fatality will have little to no effect on the random consumer deciding to purchase a car. But how many people stop flying (or reduce their number of flights) as a result of an airline crash?

(04-21-2010 03:50 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  

I45owl Wrote:It would be interesting to see what the airlines would've done if they had not been grounded by regulators. They have no interest in those that may die in car crashes.

A single automobile fatality will have little to no effect on the random consumer deciding to purchase a car. But how many people stop flying (or reduce their number of flights) as a result of an airline crash?

That introduces a feedback loop into the system, but you should still be able to model the outcomes.

(04-21-2010 12:47 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(04-21-2010 12:44 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  Same thing in the climate questions.
Scientists/Environmentalists are only concerned with change from status quo... not how much it costs to correct it or the possibility that a single volcano can change all of their conclusions.

One would expect that volcanic ash would factor into their models...

Not really. What their models do is make an estimate of things like volcanic activity over a longer period of time (not to mention everything else) and create a littany of statistically likely events/situations. In a nutshell... there's an 80% chance of "a" leading to an 80% chance of "b" coupled with an 80% chance of "c"... ad infinitum... so the probability of each event might be 80%, but the probability of a,b,c leading to their conclusion of a ten degree rise in temps over 1000 years is 51%... much less the hundreds and thousands of possibilities that actually lead to their conclusions. Sure, they give you a dV and an SD and reach a probability bell curve... but they don't give you an ANSWER.

My point is that while their models CONSIDER volcanic activity, they are weighted to what is statistically likely. If just ONE, much less dozens or hundreds of these "unlikely" events happen, then the outcome can be dramatically different... where a ten degree warming becomes a ten degree cooling. I don't think they've guessed right, and have often been QUITE wrong on the number, location or strength of hurricanes, tornados, storms, volcanos or anything else... despite having years of data and massive computers.

This event is a microcosm of the same debate. An environmentalist would argue that the worst thing that happens from taking global warming seriously would be a cleaner planet... but they ignore the financial, political and societal costs... not to mention the potential unintended consequences. What if we took steps to eliminate greenhouse gasses cooling the earth and a volcano cooled it even more... creating an ice age that might have been averted by a more polluted environment? Of course, you'd never PLAN for that, but it's not impossible.

(04-21-2010 03:35 PM)I45owl Wrote:  For the purposes of argument, it doesn't really matter if the author is correct in the certainty of more deaths due to the specified scenarios. But, there are similar circumstances in which policy makers almost certainly act out of moral cowardice in choosing the greater of two evils for superficial reasons.

I agree with this part. I'm just not sure the ash cloud is the best example.

(04-21-2010 04:14 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  My point is that while their models CONSIDER volcanic activity, they are weighted to what is statistically likely.

I don't know how frequently there is a volcanic eruption of this kind. If it is several times per century, they would surely have to account for it. If it's once every 1000 years, then they may not. In the global context, this seems to me the several-per-century variety, just that it's hitting the news usually doesn't happen over densely populated areas.

Certain costs:

Recriminations erupt in ash-fueled aviation crisis | General Headlines | Comcast.net

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-gen...d.Volcano/ Wrote:Recriminations erupt in ash-fueled aviation crisis | General Headlines | Comcast.net

Airlines toted up losses topping $2 billion and struggled to get hundreds of thousands of travelers back home Wednesday after a week of crippled air travel, as questions and recriminations erupted over Europe's chaotic response to the volcanic ash cloud.

Civil aviation authorities defended their decisions to ground fleets and close the skies — and later to reopen them — against heated charges by airline chiefs that the decisions were based on flawed data or unsubstantiated fears.

The aviation crisis sparked by a volcanic eruption in Iceland left millions in flightless limbo, created debilitating losses for airlines and other industries and even threatened Europe's economic recovery. An aviation group called the financial fallout worse than the three-day worldwide shutdown after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Uncertain potential costs:

Recriminations erupt in ash-fueled aviation crisis | General Headlines | Comcast.net

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-gen...d.Volcano/ Wrote:"The only priority that we consider is safety. We were trying to assess the safe operating levels for aircraft engines with ash," said Eamonn Brennan, chief executive of Irish Aviation Authority.

BA chief executive Willie Walsh said by Tuesday it had become clear the lockdown was excessive.

"I don't believe it was necessary to impose a blanket ban on all U.K. airspace last Thursday," he said. "My personal belief is that we could have safely continued operating for a period of time."
...
"They put all the experts on the sidelines," he said. "(Airlines) are used to this. They deal with volcanic situations all over the world on a daily basis, so they are quite capable of making decisions."
...
"It might have made sense to ground flights for a day or two. That's understandable. But there should have been a much faster response by the governments, the transport ministers and the regulators," he told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
...
But Tomio Okamura of the Association of Czech Travel Agents said despite huge losses his industry was happier being safe than sorry.

"It would be much bigger a catastrophe for us in case of any passenger plane crash. That would have a fatal, long-term consequences for the industry," Okamura said in Prague.

In Berlin, Giovanni Bisignani, the head of the International Air Transport Association, called the economic fallout "devastating" and urged European governments to compensate airlines for lost revenues like the U.S. government did following the 9/11 terror attacks.
...
But uncertainty still remained about the safety of the volcanic debris.

The Finnish Air Force said volcanic ash dust was found in the engine of an F-18 Hornet jet but it caused no significant damage. Officials said "contaminants on its inside surfaces" of the fighter-bomber's engine would be further analyzed.

A test flight by the German Aerospace Center found ash over eastern Germany that was comparable in density to a plume of dust above the Saharan desert. The center reported no damage to the airplane.

A French weather service plane also took samples of the air Tuesday and found no volcanic ash problems.

Those results appeared to contradict the potentially dire conclusions by the Swiss scientists. ...

The flaws in the system, in which each country maintains sovereignty over its own airspace, "cannot be ignored much longer," said EU spokeswoman Helen Kearns.

(04-21-2010 03:55 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(04-21-2010 03:50 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  

I45owl Wrote:It would be interesting to see what the airlines would've done if they had not been grounded by regulators. They have no interest in those that may die in car crashes.

A single automobile fatality will have little to no effect on the random consumer deciding to purchase a car. But how many people stop flying (or reduce their number of flights) as a result of an airline crash?

That introduces a feedback loop into the system, but you should still be able to model the outcomes.

Of course. I'm just speculating that there are risk factors, which are less comfortable to discuss publicly, that could factor into the decision.

(04-21-2010 05:01 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(04-21-2010 04:14 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  My point is that while their models CONSIDER volcanic activity, they are weighted to what is statistically likely.

I don't know how frequently there is a volcanic eruption of this kind. If it is several times per century, they would surely have to account for it. If it's once every 1000 years, then they may not. In the global context, this seems to me the several-per-century variety, just that it's hitting the news usually doesn't happen over densely populated areas.

My point is that it is simply another variable that they take into account, but only serves to make their estimates less likely, less predictable and less reliable. I agree they consider it, but they are so difficult to predict and the potential difference of 1 Standard Deviation in frequency, timing or magnitude can mean a HUGE difference in the ultimate outcome over a long period of time... and as far as I know, the location doesn't really matter to the global warming argument, does it? (I admit I could be wrong)

Obviously climate isn't ONE thing. We talk about global warming while experiencing colder winters... we talk about melting ice caps, but lower temperatures in other parts of the world. A model that in any way attempts to predict the millions of possible iterations is well inteneded, but is an academic exercise in futility. Mother Nature isn't predictable.

That doesn't mean I don't fully support keeping our environment clean and preserving our resources... it just means that I'm not going to be "scared" into spending trillions of dollars with no reasonable expectation that it will make any difference. Bringing the point full circle... We have a tendency to present cataclysmic predictions in an effort to force action... rather than to say the truth... and that is... while the probability of an air accident is increased by 10%, we will be criticised if we don't do this and something bad happens... the cost of cancelling these flights to us is zero, so the decision is easier. The risk to the people making the decision is zero for saying no.