YOU SAID IT

Cdr Ashok R Raut

Truth and Dare

Flight Safety is everybody’s concern; airing personal views in a common forum such as the ‘Meatball’ helps introspection and reassurance or correction in our methods and procedures. I believe that this is a plain-speak forum for all of us to suggest improvements.

My suggestion discusses the case of pressures. Pressure in operations and maintenance are here to stay. However, analysis of it may help us in many ways. Recently, during Hansa’s FSI I had an opportunity to interact with the President AIRCATS. He was genuinely concerned about working pressures and stress factors caused by them on all aviation people. He was of the considered opinion that all pressures on our personnel adversely affect flight safety. Rightly so.

Pressure in my opinion is a phenomenon of physics. When pressure is applied it works in a given direction. The right amount of pressure produces beneficial results. However, continued and excessive application of pressure deteriorates the components on which it’s applied, be it our system, our aircraft, or our men.

We have an excellent system in place to carry out material survey of our aircraft and their components. If we find the material state satisfactory we may allow certain extensions to them before their scheduled maintenance activity or inspection falls due. While allowing such extensions we take operational demands in consideration and systematic echelon-wise latitude is granted as per NAMM/INAP 2.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a system of material survey for our men. Though we may categorise them as S1A1, A1G1, S2A2 and so on, it is certainly not indicative of their psychological health or working capacity. Fatigue needs to be taken into consideration while applying pressure on the men behind the machine, the biggest and the weakest link in the flight safety chain.

Now, how do we achieve this? How do we quantify human fatigue and the pressure to be applied to achieve the maximum desirable result (i.e., efficiency)? Before discussing this aspect let’s see the elements of pressure/fatigue on human functioning.

Elements of Pressure. There are various elements of pressure/fatigue in the day-to-day life of aviation personnel. They are so diverse and varied in range that enumerating them may not be possible. Also they are different in every individual. While rules for pressure reduction cannot be generalised, a few common elements of pressure can be categorised as below:-

·        Domestic worries

·        Lack of amenities

·        Insensitive leadership

·        Personal (not so good) habits

·        Bureaucratic and tedious working procedures

·        Longer working hours

·        Lack of recreation (time and facilities)

·        Too many inspections and explanations/returns asked.

·        Communal duties and BJs.

·        Materialistic pressures of a liberated economy.

·        Lack of professional challenges.

These elements are self explanatory and are common for all individuals. We cannot expect an individual to work at the best of his ability with worries on his mind. If he has to run around to explain why he travelled by a luxury bus and not by government bus while on Temporary Duty, if he has to gather and stick so many bills and tickets and so many timings of various railway schedules on his claim (which can come back anytime for recovery), he invariably remains worried for certain amount of time.

Similarly, an air station could have the best swimming pool but do the personnel there have time to swim? Are the swimming pool timings convenient? As for the too many inspections, in my opinion we often land up in “proving” how we are right than “doing” things right. This “proving” rather than “doing” attitude gives birth to useless data which we cover up with nice decorative plastic and put up to the inspection agency. (Don’t believe me? Please check up the fortnightly FS workshop data of any air station).

In the present day, twenty percent of the personnel in an air station are permanently engaged in communal duties. Additional allocation by daily orders is separate and at times consumes almost all the junior sailors available. We can either close our eyes while questioning the author’s audacity in daring to make such statements, or we can choose to see this phenomenon in the right perspective. It’s high time we appreciate that communal (ism) is a bad word not only for the country but also for Naval Aviation (though with a different connotation).

Our maintenance efforts are increasing many-fold due to the ageing of our fleet, the addition of numerous sensors and their test benches and routines that come with them. However, the number of personnel working on these constantly increasing systems has remained the same. The gap is often filled up by adding more working hour, thereby cutting down on recouping time.

We need to understand that every day’s warlike situation often result in crisis management and merely ticking marks on all important activities without sparing a serious thoughts for improvement. This develops a “Din jaao, Transfer Aao” attitude, many a times people work only to gather information and to produce impressive briefs rather than actually applying their minds to the proper completion of jobs.

Fine, we have a problem, unless we want to be an ostrich and bury our head in sand. Now, how do you solve it contributing more meaningfully to jobs?

First and foremost we must have belief in our wonderful system and excellent people. We need to make people down the line more responsible. We need to stop the starting of working hours at 1700hrs and continuing work thereafter. We need to avoid clustering of all-important activities wherever possible. For example, a VIP visit, Diwali mela, FSI inspection, enhanced security state and some seminar somewhere all come at the same time! Some are avoidable and some are not at various echelons of our system.

Now, let’s take the case of the number of inspections a frontline squadron goes through.  There’s the squadron quality cell inspection, the station quality audit, RAQAS Quality Assurance program, Flight Safety Inspection by AIRCATS, FI by HQNA and the Annual inspection by the Command.  It’s not my intention to question their importance but can we condense them to save some man-hours and give more time to the squadrons to think on their own? We need to introspect.

        As we all are leaders at various levels we need to be more sensitive toward our subordinates. Building up of camaraderie and bringing in more esprit-de-corps can do wonders. This can happen more effectively if leaders have big ears, and are more participative and understanding. We need not work like MNCs, where principles of management are applied mechanically; we are a fighting force and therefore stronger bonds are expected amongst us.

          Outsourcing is a one way to cope with the situation we discussed. These solutions are already being applied by units and workload on ground machinery maintenance has considerably reduced. However, surprisingly it has not reduced our so called communal duties yet. Maybe we need to work towards that end.

One thing which we can adopt from MNCs is to believe in our own people more than the auditors.  If we know the entitlement of an individual, say, about LTC, then why don’t we pay him a lump sum and finish it off?  Why compel him to travel in a particular mode, particular way?   Let’s just give him his entitlement and believe him.  Or pre-audit the whole thing like in the Air Force.  Pending things often work on the subconscious mind and add to the pressures.  Therefore, we need to simplify personnel payments and logistics by removing the much-hated bureaucracy from it.

Pressures and fatigue cannot be quantified as every individual’s tolerances to them are varied.  However, what we can’t quantify we can simplify; reduced pressures by the above discussed methods certainly can go a long way in ensuring flight safety.  They can also save us a few nice plastic coated registers with useless data.  More smiles around can certainly light the path of flight safety.  I hope this self-criticism and introspection would be taken in the right spirit.