Safety Against the Odds

Isabel Goyer

Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 02:07 AM ET

Verified

U.S. Air Force

Key Takeaways:

The USAF achieved its safest year in Fiscal Year 2009 with an exceptionally low Class A Aviation Flight Mishap rate of 0.8 per 100,000 flying hours, significantly outperforming most segments of civilian aviation.
This remarkable safety record is attributed to the comprehensive efforts of the Air Force Safety Center, which oversees policy, provides guidance, and conducts rapid, in-depth investigations to pinpoint causes and generate actionable recommendations.
Success is driven by a multi-faceted approach including dedicated programs like Bird/Wildlife Aircraft Strike Hazard (BASH), a strong emphasis on human factors, continuous training, advanced technologies, and a top-down organizational commitment to safety where every airman is seen as a safety officer.

See a mistake? Contact us.

The e-mail we received here at Flying from Col. Sid “Scroll” Mayeux, chief of aviation safety at the United States Air Force Safety Center, was a little hard to believe. “Last year (Fiscal Year 2009),” Mayeux’s e-mail read, “was the USAF’s safest year in aviation safety, with 17 Class A Aviation Flight Mishaps for a 0.8 rate per 100,000 flying hours.”

One might think that the job of attaining a level of safety like that, given the Air Force’s high-flying, high-tech fleet of aircraft, was an impossible task, and I would have been right there with you. Somehow, though, the Air Force seems to have hit upon a formula for safety that last year approached perfection.