E307 - No, DEI isn't making planes crash

[00:00:00] Nick Roome: Barry, question for you. Do you ever get jealous of like old timey newscasters who are like, Don't adjust your sets, folks! When an anomaly happens or something.

[00:00:08] Barry Kirby: No, but I can see where you're coming from. Okay. I can do it.

[00:00:10] Nick Roome: Yeah. Don't adjust your podcast catchers or sets folks. Cause we're here.

Yes. Yes. You're, this is episode 307. We're recording this episode live as you can tell on February 20th. It's been a minute since we've been here. And this is human factors cast. I'm your host, Nick Rome. I'm joined today by Mr. Barry Kirby. Hello. Hey, but where have you been? Where have you been?

What's been going on?

[00:00:36] Barry Kirby: You came up with some excuses around, you've had work, you've had things going on. I've come up with excuses like I've been doing work and things going on. Yeah, I think life just has thoroughly got in the way. But, we're back now. But

[00:00:48] Nick Roome: we're back and we have a show for you tonight.

And I say a show, I usually say a fun show, an exciting show, an awesome show. This one is going to be potentially a little difficult to talk about. We're, if you see the title of this episode we're going to be talking about all the aviation incidents that have been happening over the last month that we've been off air.

Some of the details around these things can get a little sensitive, especially as we are talking about the loss of life. And so I wanted to give a warning at the top. If this is not the episode for you, that's okay. Come back. We're happy to have you next time. We are going to try to focus most of our discussion on the human factors aspects of these aviation incidents.

And specifically we'll be going over. Five of them that are higher profile that have happened in the last month. But before we do that, I always like to check in with my good friend, Barry, to see what's been going on with 1202.

[00:01:45] Barry Kirby: That this will be quite quick conversation because absolutely nothing I've got to be honest.

We are taking a bit of a break. At the start of this year. Again, I'm going to, I'm going to refer back to my previous comments about how life's getting in the way. But we hope to get back to things before the Ergonomist Conference here in the UK. So April, back end of April, is the Ergonomist Conference, and we aim to have some content coming out before that, and then some of the stuff that we'll be doing during that, and then for the rest of the year.

We hope to dive into a slightly different formats, like a newer format. And we've got a bit of a long term vision about where we want to go in terms of we, we running up to IEA 2027. And so we want to ramp up some things to that. So that's a long way around saying absolutely nothing. So far, Nick, absolutely nothing.

[00:02:31] Nick Roome: Hey great to have you here. So you can contribute to this. So yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna get started. And I think what, how do we do this podcasting thing? We roll the.

Yes, it's human factors news. This is the part of the show where we talk all about human factors news. Barry, we don't have a blurb this week, but maybe you could go over some of the aviation incidents that have happened over the last month and maybe a little summary on each of them, maybe where they happened, I think that might be a good way to get us all up to date if you haven't been checking in with the news and what's been going on.

So Barry, over to you.

[00:03:01] Barry Kirby: Yeah, so for this show, we are going to be focused on five main incidents that have happened in the past month or within 2025. So the first one of note was the quite high profile collision between a helicopter and a plane. in Washington where an army helicopter and American Airlines flight collided and killing all the people on board the two aircraft.

It's been described as the country's deadliest aviation disaster since 2001. So we're going to get into that one. This was then followed. literally a couple of days later by an air ambulance crashing on in philadelphia onto a busy philadelphia street killing seven, which is tragic in a whole number of ways.

But it's a medical transport jet with a child patient, mother and four others on board crashing into a philadelphia neighborhood. That killed some people, all of us aboard and injuring 19 others. So that was a leader jet that there was a medical transport. This then was followed by a commuter plane crashing in Alaska which on February the 6th, which killed the pilot and nine passengers a single engine turboprop Cessna caravan disappeared about an hour after taking off.

And the Coast Guard said the aircraft went missing about 30 miles southeast of Nome. Why such the body and the debris were found the next day on the sea ice. So we'll be covering a bit of that. Then later on in Toronto this is probably another one of the more the high profile ones where a Delta plane arriving at Toronto's Pearson airport flying in from Minneapolis, flipped on landing, landing on its roof, injuring at least 17 people.

And actually for me, one of the most stunning things outside of this is there was only injuries rather than rather than fatalities. The amount of video footage available from that is is mind blowing. This was then followed. Oh, am I up to date now? And then, sorry, there was a the final one that we'll be looking at is a one in South Arizona where there was a small small plane collision, which is between two small planes resulting in two fatalities.

And so that was yesterday. So yeah, so we're going to be covering all five of them. And where do you want to begin? Okay,

[00:05:09] Nick Roome: so I think we begin with the disclaimer. The disclaimer is as such, all of these are currently under investigation. What we're going to be talking about today is our best understanding of the situation as it stands today, which is again, February 20th, 2025.

So if you're listening to this in the future, there may be new information new details that come out about any one of these incidents. And so please take what we're saying today with a grain of salt. Again, we're going to talk through these from a human factors perspective. And we'll talk about them from that perspective with the details that are available.

So I think I think maybe we talk about the ones that that maybe happened recently and then work our way back just because we will have less details about the ones that happened recently. And I think that's a safe bet for us to move backwards. What do you think, Barry?

Yeah,

[00:06:06] Barry Kirby: no, that works for me. So let's talk about the one that happened yesterday. Where there was a small plane collision in southern Arizona. Yeah.

[00:06:16] Nick Roome: Do you want to go through the details or do you want me to read off some or how do you want to. You go

[00:06:21] Barry Kirby: for it, and then,

[00:06:21] Nick Roome: Then we'll dive into it.

Alright, so it looks like this one was this was two small aircraft, a Cessna 172 and a Landcare 360. And so what happened is the Cessna landed, and the other plane came and hit the ground, caught fire, and that's what we know about it. Two people confirmed. One, I have to use that because we're streaming on Tik TOK.

Hey go check that out. Bad plug. Let's see here. No, no chance for medical responders to provide treatment. Police didn't identify which plane they were in. And then it looks like that's really all the details we have on this one. We don't really know what what details were, Oh, wait, hang on.

This one is actually a midair collision.

Mhm.

[00:07:06] Barry Kirby: Yeah, it is. Yes. So it's, we will be going talking later about the but the Blackhawk also being a midair collision. And so this one will be interesting because it will have a focus on what the aircraft was were doing. And obviously there will be an air traffic control element to that as well, which is obviously very I want to say popular, but very very talked about at the moment.

Yeah. with with how air traffic control is right now. So there's going to be a lot of issues coming out of this investigation about how they're in the same airspace, how, why they weren't deconflicted why they weren't aware of each other if they were aware of each other. And it must have been Said it was, it was, it must be quite I guess high energy, shall we say, because of the the nature of the, there was just no opportunity to provide medical treatment if it was.

[00:07:52] Nick Roome: Yeah. And again this one's very new to us. Again, this happened yesterday. And so there's no details, surrounding who was at fault here, why they collided in midair. There's just a lack of details, but perhaps some of the details that are present in the DC. Some, not all some in the D.

C. Incident, I think, might. Play a similar role here. Although again, all that is speculation. We do not know. I think given the small amount of details on that one, let's back up and go with Delta because this one was actually widely captured by a couple of different perspectives. This is one of the ones that was filmed by, I think there's a couple of different perspectives, right?

There's one, one camera that's on the tarmac watching planes come and go. And then there was another actually captured by a pilot in another and another. Plane waiting to taxi to the wait, waiting to taxi. And and that one actually caught, the thing flipping over catching fire and then there's been several videos of like passengers who were getting off of that plane.

And you can see the chaos and The staff on that whole thing was just like really awesome. I think the good news about this story is that all 80 passengers and crew survived 21 sustained injuries, but come on for something like that to happen. Wow. All right. What do you want to talk about

[00:09:12] Barry Kirby: with that one?

There was one other video that. I think I only saw yesterday or the day before, which so somebody put together this montage and there's a video on the flight itself of the pilot giving the the passengers a brief about what was going wrong and what was happening. And so they knew they were coming into an emergency landing.

There was an issue with the with the undercarriage. And the pilot is explaining to the passengers that whilst they've got one of the ties have gone. has gone on one of the one of the undercarriage wheels, they're in pairs and they are rated to land on it to land on the other time and it should be fine.

But the pilot was also being quite honest and say, it should be fine. We don't actually know. So we are making sure we take all the preparations required and needed. And from a So just to take that bit alone, I think was just shows the way the professionalism of the pilot involved. I'm assuming it was pilot.

It might've been the co pilot do the briefing. Say for certain, but the professionalism within the cockpit to make sure that the passengers in the back know exactly what's going on to be prepared for what's going on and being honest. It's having the right sort of I guess culture in that to say this is what we believe is going to happen, but this is what could happen.

And obviously then eventually when to happen, we then cut to, as you say, the the pilot who sat waiting for waiting for clearance, they know that this aircraft's coming in. And you can see it clearly that there's been a the call to mayday. So everybody knows what's going on and there's, he's tracking it coming in and the way it lands, it land.

You can see it coming in, landing quite lightly or as light as it can with some weight shift over to one side. But as soon as this, I believe the right hand undercarriage. Rear end carriage hits, it just folds and, or it lands and then folds and the whole thing just flips over and you look at that from that perspective, there's fire, there is, there's high amounts of energy being going, coming out here and you've got to think to yourself, nobody's surviving that.

The amount of just the amount of, um, movement involved, the amount of energy of hitting the tarmac and rotational energy, all that sort of stuff. You can't be thinking that the, that you get out of this with 21 people, I would say some significant injuries, but. survivor with just injuries.

And you write that you then cut to a piece where that they, you see the the passengers and the crew coming off office upside down aircraft, almost as if, yep, no, it's well drilled. It's well, we're all happy coming off the aircraft. So I think that, yes, it's it's a terrible incident in many ways because you've lost an aircraft and all that sort of stuff.

But I think that it just shows what happens when good training Good clearly rehearsal of skills and having the right staff doing the right thing. That could have been way worse than what it was if there'd been complete panic, if there'd been if your passengers hadn't been doing what they did.

And even once the thing was stationary and you're coming, getting the passengers off the aircraft that, that was still a quite significant point where there could have been significant injuries, people, falls, trips, all that sort of stuff. And yeah, I think that's a testament to the crew and the airline.

[00:12:38] Nick Roome: You bring up some great points and I want to give a shout out to Neil Gainey and Kelly Steelman who a while ago did a effort around collecting good news stories. And while this is really at its surface like a hard story to look at and say it's good news because There was an aviation incident.

I think you are absolutely bringing up some great points here about training, about the safety mechanisms and processes that were in play that made it. So that way all the passengers made sure that they were buckled in all the crew knew what to do in this situation the communication between the pilot and the passengers and just everything about this.

If. If all these things weren't in place, or even to the safety systems on the airplane the engineering behind the fuselage to make sure that it can sustain a certain level of impact the skills of the pilots and all the instrumentation that was assisting them with, with the landing that they knew they were going to have trouble with.

And Neil's in the comments saying, yes, Barry is very extreme incident, but this is a good news story. And I completely agree. Yeah, you can't get better than everybody surviving with, injuries, yes, injuries, but the cost of human life is just immeasurable. I think that's a good news story.

Again, we're still looking at details around this one. This one's under investigation. I think there's is there a joint effort going on by the NTSB and the Canadian equivalent, which is the Oh, what is it? The transportation safety board of Canada. I think there, there might be a joint investigation because it,

[00:14:14] Barry Kirby: I would imagine.

It's got to be because it's because it's at a Canadian airport using the, with the American American airline. So yes, it will be

[00:14:23] Nick Roome: Yep, and Neil said it best planes can be replaced. People can't. Okay. Maybe let's move on to the next 1 here again. We're going to go going back in time.

So we did the Southern Arizona small plane collision yesterday. Delta Airlines incident was what just three days ago. A little bit further back now. I think we're back at February 6th was the Alaska commuter plane crash. Again, we don't really know much about this. We do have some information and this is where we start getting into the less than happy stories, happy ending stories.

Yeah, it gets, it gets much worse from here folks. Yeah,

[00:15:00] Barry Kirby: This was a, this is every, and every, I would say an everyday flight. So this is a commuter plane in Alaska. This is where people are going to try and do routine things like medical appointments, attend work meetings buy supplies, that, that type of thing.

They, people who use these trips for. on an almost everyday basis. This bearing a single engine turbo processor caravan was traveling and it disappeared about an hour after takeoff. So it disappeared from radar and no, no comms were heard. The coast guard said the aircraft went missing about.

30 miles southeast of no, there was a, because of that, there was a wide search and the planes body was found. So it was a splintered up and debris. They didn't find it till the next day. The day of the crash, they, the weather was like light snow and fog temperature 17, 17 degrees Fahrenheit, which is minus 8.

3 degrees Celsius. And so this, these were just short hop flights. It's just part of that whole part of that whole sort of network of doing that. Little is known at the moment about what the true cause of that was. It will be investigated. I think, I should imagine it's going to be quite a hard.

a thing to actually get down to what truly happened because of the size and type of aircraft. It won't have the same sort of devices on that you would expect a larger aircraft to have. But also it'd be interesting to know how much effort would be put into it to piece all of that together.

Given what it was. So, but it was tragic that everybody was killed on board. And there'll be questions asked around where they, was that part of the actual collision or part of the incident or because of the environment that they crashed in? Cold, wet. Yeah. Um, and things. So yes, I don't think there's much more we can truly add to that.

[00:16:49] Nick Roome: Here's some details. Before, let's see, I climbed to a cruising altitude of about 7, 700 feet prior to the disappearance on radar. Flight's pilot informed Anchorage air traffic control that he would begin a holding pattern with the plane while waiting for the runway to be cleared. Then there was a statement here by Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander.

No distress signals were received from the plane. U. S. Civil Air Patrol stated that around 318 p. m. the aircraft had undergone, quote, some kind of event which caused them to experience a rapid loss in elevation and a rapid loss in speed. So we're not quite sure what that is Coast guard said that the plane went missing.

We already knew that. Let's see here. And I think everything else here I'm looking at. So the investigation they're launching an investigation about this because it's fatal crash. Let's see here under preliminary stages of investigation and and we're monitoring development.

So no official statement other than. That so I'm pulling up the latest on these things as we're talking through them so we can bring you what we know at this time. So again, this is a these are the details that we know here. We don't really know much, but we'll get to the point where we know much.

Okay, this this next one.

[00:18:10] Barry Kirby: It is. It's so we now go into Philadelphia where a a Learjet 55, a medical transport jet has had a patient, a child with mother and four others on board has crashed. into a Philadelphia neighborhood at the end of January, exploding into a fireball that engulfed several homes. So there's not only the the onboard people who were killed then, but there's also the people on the ground and significant injuries.

According to the source we have the aircraft took off and then plummeted into a steep descent, crashing less than a minute after takeoff from Northeast Philadelphia airport. The plane hit the ground and he was as unlucky would have it because it's a busy Friday. It's the left a scene of devastation for at least four blocks.

[00:19:01] Nick Roome: Probably the most recorded event out of all these. This is probably the one that I've seen the most points of view on from various perspectives. I don't know if there's a super cut out there, there's like ring cameras that caught this on footage. There's people who were at drive thrus who caught.

sort of the immediate aftermath. There are dash cams that saw this happen. Because the impact was right in the middle of an intersection.

[00:19:24] Barry Kirby: Yes. And just significant, I think issues like this obviously come way more into play because of where it's happened in contrast to the previous one we talked about in Alaska. The, there's just everything about this is a tragedy. From the type of aircraft it was being a air ambulance all the way through to being, the crashed into a very busy urban area.

So this will have caused a massive response from emergency services, and I should imagine that the amount of coordination that would have needed to have happened. I wonder, and I don't know whether this is the sort of thing that they would do exercises for. This amount of coordination this close to an airport, whether that these this would be scenario that they would play out.

On the one hand, you think they probably would give them what they're doing, but actually given what it takes to have that sort of exercise going on and the amount of different actors involved, then you could easily see that actually, maybe they don't. Because of the nature of what it is.

So there's been, there would, there's been a whole lot of coordination going on to make that as safe as it can, as quickly as it can be. So yeah, it's again, it's ongoing investigations as to actually why I don't know whether you've got more update information as to the, if there's any updated cause to it, but but in the grand scheme of things it's still being investigated.

[00:20:47] Nick Roome: Yeah this one's the toughest one. I'm looking for official updates from the NTSB on this one. And I am

pulling up links. I think the I'm just looking over to see if there were any other details that we may have missed here. I do know that early on there was issues recovering the black box, but I think that was shortly recovered after Looking at the the immediate response just from a human factors perspective in terms of public safety communication is interesting because this is one of those situations where the aircraft itself was an event, but then also there's some immediate aftermath with how to, um, how to handle the public with the area that is affected.

And so I think Really interesting response from the teams there. I think there's a couple detours that were set up, but then just generally there was a lot of it was it happened in a working class area. And so there's a lot of folks impacted and so folks, came out. They all were trying to help each other and it looks like, that's all we know at this time. I'm, again, trying to double check my sources here to make sure there's any latest on this, but I am not seeing any.

Okay, let me just make sure. There, there's a briefing on February 1st, and I don't think,

yep, I don't think there's anything new. Okay so let's get to probably the highest profile one that maybe sparked more media attention towards the other the other ones here. And I think this one is also good to cover because it has probably the most direct human factors applications that we can talk through.

And again, like this is going to be from our. Our perspective, what we know today I don't know where we start with this one. Barry, do we just want to talk through what happened and then maybe go from there. So

[00:22:48] Barry Kirby: The basics the midair collision, so an army helicopter, army Blackhawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet collided in near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in D.

C. The, they collided and then crashed into the Potomac River. And the initial, I the initial indications were that the helicopter flew straight into the path of the American Airlines Regional jet. We then hear a, or we get a lot of reporting that the air traffic controllers try to make the the Blackhawk aware of the aircraft.

To make sure to get to help with de conflict. So de confliction make sure that they don't, that they don't collide. And then nothing seems to work. Both aircraft collide and. All 67 people aboard both aircraft I killed and there was an operation to pull the bodies from the river.

What it was, I guess what then made it such a story was not only the fact that what it happened and the the incident. Such a catastrophic loss of life and the nature of the incident. But then the President Trump in the White House then suggested as to causes about why it was happening and coming up with solutions before any sort of investigation had taken place.

And that's Has then been that catalyst for, a greater intensity of media scrutiny on the other four issues that we've talked about in this episode because I guess if we're going to look at the elephant in the room about this President Trump blamed DEI on a, the crew in the Blackhawk, but also then the air traffic controllers and the called into question the professionalism of the air traffic controllers and of the crew.

We now know that the, or as things have developed, we've, there's definitely some questions, some human factors questions around the. The work that air traffic control was doing to try and deconflict these two aircraft because there's and this is still an ongoing investigation. So we're only going with what's given, but there's there's a bit, there's a potential belief that whilst air traffic control were highlighting the aircraft in front of them to deconflict with, they, there was actually another aircraft nearby.

And there's a thought that they were deconflicting with that. the other aircraft, not the one that was right in front of them. That is then compounded by some more recent discussion around whether actually doing night vision training, and so that they're wearing night vision goggles in order to be, get recertified.

onto that. And if you're wearing night vision goggles, then it gives you a very thin so you don't see light in the same way. It's it's the way that they work is you have to be looking pretty much at the source in order to see what's going on. So it's not like you would easily notice a light in your more peripheral vision because the way that works.

And so the Then there was also an element of why they were flying above a normal altitude for the route that they were doing. The route that, that they were doing was completely normal. It was something that they should be doing. But there is a question around the altitude that they were flying up because they were clear to around 200 feet.

And it, this, yeah, this happened much higher than that. So there's a lot going on here. A lot. Yes.

[00:26:15] Nick Roome: I am going, I'm going to propose a drinking game to anyone who's following along right now. Anytime we say ongoing investigation or investigation in progress. Take a drink. Yes, that's

[00:26:26] Barry Kirby: not a bad.

[00:26:27] Nick Roome: Okay.

We don't know all the details. So I think I don't know if I'd like to talk so much about the United States government's official statements on the matter, but I would like to talk about the impacts of what is going on at the air traffic control level. And I think there's the trick with this is that there's so many different things that we could get into.

And I tend to think about this accident. In some of the, like the classic human factors categories, right? We have this visual situational awareness issue between the 2 aircraft. You have communication and coordination that's happening between the 2 you have procedures that are being followed.

But again, because of some of the the visual things that were happening, whether that's the night vision and. Seeing the wrong plane and deconflicting with the wrong aircraft. I think there's some communication challenges happening there. On top of all this, the army helicopter was running a simulation, and so they were probably under an increased workload while they were doing this because they were managing other things.

In addition to this you know what? What's happening from an automation perspective? I. I know one of the details that the NTSB came out with at one point was that at the, at one of the, in the tail end of time before the crash the aircraft attempted to raise the nose. And so they were aware that the collision was going to happen on board.

You can also look at some of the environmental conditions that was going on. Especially because it was nighttime. There's a greater increase in the or a decrease in visual acuity when it comes to seeing other vehicles. And then you compare you compound that with the night vision goggles.

There's a lot going on here. And. We could really each one of those could be it's an episode in its own, right. But I think I'll go back to our chat right now and I'm going to bring in some comments that, that Neil was bringing up. So I think the first thing that I'll mention here is that there's a problem with finding and training air traffic controllers to replace those who are retiring, so it's a huge challenge.

And. It's resulting in more pressure being put onto the remaining ATC personnel. And I think that's obviously a contributing factor here. I think the procedures that play here the air traffic controller was doing everything that they were trained to do. They were communicating with both aircraft the procedures that they follow they rerouted the the American Airlines.

I'm getting confused with all these American airlines, they rerouted them from one, one runway to another, which is why some of this happened. I think the communication challenges with the army helicopter, I think what had happened there was I need to find the exact statement because this is from memory.

So let me find the exact statement, but I'm going to say it and then I'll get the exact statement. What had happened, I think, was that there was a push to talk type scenario where part of the communications was covered by the push to talk. And so the army helicopter may not have received the full communication.

And I need to find the official statement on that. , blah, blah. Okay, maybe you can talk a little bit about it while I look for that exact statement.

[00:29:47] Barry Kirby: Yeah, I guess the, to pull in the the bit around air traffic control itself. It's, there was some, because of the time that it was normally you would have two air traffic controllers, one covering the helicopter traffic and one, one of the either arriving or departing planes, you have another air traffic controller covering the other half of the workload.

But what would normally happen because the, at that time night, the level of intensity of work goes down. That is why you then then rules will be combined because the workload is less. So there is a a vein of thought that actually, you know, that the, that there was too much workload for for an operator, but this was pretty much business as usual for what they're doing.

[00:30:29] Nick Roome: I found the statement. I found the state. I would like to say the statement before we continue. So it says 17 seconds before impact, a radio transmission from the tower was audible on both CVRs directing the Blackhawk to pass behind the CRJ CVR date behind the CRJ CVR data from the Blackhawk.

Indicated that the position of the transmission that stated, quote, pass behind the end, quote, may not have been received by the Blackhawk crew. Transmission was stepped on by a point eight second mic key from the Blackhawk. The Blackhawk was keying the mic to communicate with ATC, so they may not have heard pass behind the.

[00:31:10] Barry Kirby: Yeah. And I think the, as more and more comes out of this, then there's going to be more and more of a spotlight spotlight hell on, on each different bit, because there was nuances behind this. Think we can do this without talking about the about the statements from the white house and the significant impact that will have on.

On the investigation, because this idea of, we certainly within air traffic control within errors within the aerospace sector, we have this idea of a just culture on the aerospace industry is a forerunner in the human factors world for not only, Trying to do what it can to prevent accidents in the first place, but also then when accidents happen to investigate and come up with the reasoning as to why something happened them investigations, as we've already said whoever wants to drink and drink investigations are ongoing because each one of these need all of that.

So for the president to stand up there within the Was it within an hour? It was very quick to blame it on

[00:32:18] Nick Roome: I'll read I'll read the snippet of the statement that is relevant to this conversation, but I'm not giving the rest of it the time of day.

Something Biden administration something requiring all executive departments agencies to implement dangerous diversity equity and inclusion tactics and specifically recruiting individuals with quote severe intellectual end quote disabilities in the FAA. And I'm going to immediately discount that because it makes me mad.

[00:32:48] Barry Kirby: The FAA were very quick to come back to that and state that whilst, there are DEI hiring things around there, um, there was a positive drive to bring in people from a range of backgrounds. Not once. They all still had to meet the the hiring guidelines off air traffic control.

For the FAA. So in the grand scheme of things, this has got nothing to do with the what happened. Though what he has now done is automatically set sites of people who don't necessarily get involved in this type of thing. Joe Public or automatically feeling that this is to blame when it's not.

And not only does that go against and it'll make life difficult for the investigators to come up with what, with what, whatever the result is when the, when. The when they could reach a conclusion, and if that is different, and it's going to be different. I would put a lot of money on.

It's going to be different from what President Trump has claimed. Then we are we how seriously will that be taken? And will it be learned from? But then what does that do for the air traffic control culture going forward? Or the air traffic control organizations going forward about, how much will they, will their environment be changed?

Will their culture have to change to deal with the way that the white houses is treated them in this incident, not

[00:34:19] Nick Roome: only air traffic control culture, but human factors culture. And speaking of that, that this is actually a really good segue to something that was released today. And I'm going to read parts and bits of this, but the full statement is available on the HFES website.

I will say that they put out, they, they put out a statement here, a statement from the human factors and ergonomic society on the DC aircraft. Accident and aviation safety. I'll read a couple of passages that are relevant to the discussion that we're talking about right now. As a non profit society composed of scientists and engineers specializing in human factors and ergonomics, including flight deck and air traffic control systems, HFES emphasizes the importance of relying on evidence based and established safety principles when assessing aviation incidents.

Further, it is critical to clarify that in the 75 plus years of aviation research and engineering, there have been. Never been any elements associated with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility identified as a causal factor in an aviation collision.

[00:35:25] Barry Kirby: Yep. And I think that's a really good statement and I applaud HFES for putting that out. It is a lot more to that statement. Paragraphs and paragraphs of it. Every one of them, I think, is golden and I thoroughly recommend anybody to go and to go and read the entire thing. But I think that the bit about it being we use scientific rigor to investigate these incidents is absolutely key because it's true.

Ever since we had the early air incidents where we've, where we seek to understand why. incidents have happened, and not just because a piece of kit is broken, but then also go back into why that piece of kit was broken, which is the birth of the whole human factors human error, operator error, human error is never the answer etc.

Just to then go and claim that it was because of DEI is, the other side of it, we talked a lot about the air traffic control here. But there is the crew of the Blackhawk as well, that that the military were then under pressure not to necessarily name the crew of the Blackhawk, but to tell us were they male or female.

And the family of one of the crew didn't want that released because of the this negative and abhorrent focus on the DI aspect of that unfortunately they, they then did have to release a name and put it out there because of largely press intrusion or it being put out there on social media and things.

But I just think the whole thing the act, the incident itself is a tragedy and hopefully we'll get to the investigation. We'll find out exactly what happened. We will learn from it and it won't be in vain. Positive things will come out of it in the for the future of aviation, but it's an absolute tragedy for for culture for the way that all the this state that this bit of government is now driving a wedge between basically everybody.

In this field, and that is the reason why we've then focused on these, the other four incidents in this in this episode is all because that one statement.

[00:37:29] Nick Roome: Yeah. All right. I'm going to, I'm going to leave you all with another passage from HFES is official response reads. We encourage the community to rely on evidence and science based analysis.

and establish safety principles when assessing this or any incidents HFES will wait for the National Transportation Safety Board and the appropriate bodies to conclude their independent and disciplined work to determine facts and causal factors involved. NTSB's findings and recommendations are critical to inform system design, training, policy, and procedural changes to the aviation industry that will enhance safety.

So again, Bringing it all back. Our work is important in human factors. And I just want to to leave it there. I think it's a great message and appreciate HFES for putting that out there. I think any closing words on, on any of the aviation pieces that we talked about? I

[00:38:29] Barry Kirby: think we've had a variety and breadth of tragedy across all five of these.

Obviously, we've highlighted the one in Toronto as being yes, a crash, but a success story from the way that everybody survived, which is fantastic. But on the whole, there's been such a difference in size. impact, location. But they've all had that common theme, which has been, let's work out what's happened.

Let's work out why it happened. Who was involved? Why did we get to where we got to? And we as a community will drive into that to make sure that we get to the proper causes of that. So it won't just be operator error. It'll be understanding how we got there in the first place. And despite the variety in what they are and the size or that sort of stuff, they will all have that same output.

I hope.

[00:39:27] Nick Roome: Yeah,

[00:39:28] Barry Kirby: I

[00:39:28] Nick Roome: hope so too. There'll definitely be some lessons learned from this. That'll prevent things like this from happening again in the future. Alright, thank you to our friends over at we got a lot of our sources from the Associated Press, PBS, we had HFES, we had the NTSB, we had a lot of sources in there.

So thank you huge thank you to all of these sources who are bringing us the latest up to date information on all of this. If you want to follow along we'll post the links in our And our blog, you can join us on our discord. If you want to talk more about this in the downtime between episodes, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back to see what our one more thing is this week.

Cause we're running out of time. All right. Back after. this Yes, huge thank you as always to the folks who support the show monetarily patrons. I'm talking to you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much. I know we're not as frequent with publishing as we have been, but hopefully the content that we do bring to you is at least something valuable and worthwhile.

And if you'd like to show your support, there you go. You can do that and truly all keep the lights on. Keep all this stuff functional. So that way, when we do hop into the studio, I'm not pulling out my credit card to go.

All right. It's it's been a minute since we talked and unfortunately we didn't have a whole lot of time for the, it came from section. Thank you to Neil for chiming off in the comments there and helping us break down some of the some of the stories from today. So what we'll do is we'll get into one more thing.

It's been a minute since we all met here. So Barry, what is your one more thing this week? And you know what? I'm going to go ahead and preempt this by saying a few, one more things is okay.

[00:41:08] Barry Kirby: That's good. Cause I've got three. So on the last. If you remember Dim Disson Pass when we did the last episode I said that Amanda had bought me Amanda, my wife had bought me a pottery lesson.

I did said pottery lesson and and I got the outcome of that a few days ago and I'm. it is now the next best thing in terms of hobbies. So I'm now people who know me know that I don't do, I do hobbies in a very all in sort of way. And so I'm now looking for pottery wheels, for kilns, I'm building a little pottery studio.

It was just really fantastic to be able to do something that was very, practical, but also engineering y and scientific y because of what this, the stuff that's going on. But you have to concentrate on it. So you have to forget about everything else, which was really so thoroughly enjoyed that.

And I can't wait to do more stuff. I'll just apologize. Now, most people at Christmas are going to be getting pottery related. Possibly the most important thing I need to do today is wish Amanda a very happy wedding anniversary because it's our wedding anniversary today. And so she won't be listening now.

But I can say to everybody else that it's our wedding anniversary and we've been together quite a long time now. The last thing is. We, you might remember a couple of years ago, me going Nick, I've just been elected to the the as president elect of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors.

And we were like going, that's crazy to let anybody on there. And so I've been on a journey of being, being president elect president, past president. And today I had my last executive meeting with the Charter Institute, which was just crazy in terms of a journey. So I've got one more, but I've got two more, obligations to do.

So we've got a council meeting coming up in, I think, about three weeks time where they, so it's a final full council meeting. And then I've got some duties to perform a conference where I host the award ceremony again. I'm the first president, I think, to do host three. Ceremonies in a row for various reasons.

Most times you just do one and that's it. It's your outgoing duty. But clearly I'm either really good at it, or I suspect really bad at it. And they said no, come back, do it again until you get it right. Yeah yeah, so it was a bit, it felt a bit weird to be letting that ship sail.

Anyway, so yeah, they're my three one more things. I have to ask you

[00:43:25] Nick Roome: I had specifically requested a picture that was reminiscent of the movie Ghost. Do you have it? Do you have it?

[00:43:34] Barry Kirby: No, not until I get my own until I get my own wheel. Okay. And even then, Amanda has suggested that, That's not helping.

All right. And I'm like but funsies for funsies.

[00:43:47] Nick Roome: Oh, maybe we can show the outcomes of your pottery in the post show. I have the picture. Oh, yeah, no, we could do that. Okay.

[00:43:55] Barry Kirby: Anyway, what about you? What are your one more things?

[00:43:58] Nick Roome: Okay. I have a couple of one more things. One, I Don't know if I mentioned it at the top of the show, new medical diagnosis.

And the, I know I mentioned it in the pre show new medical diagnosis. The, one of the things that comes with that is the obsessive tracking of certain bio markers associated with me and changing the way that I eat and exercise and long time listeners will know that I have been looking for.

Something specific for a very long time, but and that specific thing has been the integration of health records from your medical institution with data that you collect from your wearables your, um, your fitness devices your various trackers. So I have a couple of things here, right?

The new medical diagnosis has sparked everything. You remember last time I had talked about the new gym equipment. That is. That's kind of part of it. And so along with that, I've been doing obsessive tracking. Um, eagle eye viewers of this might notice I got a new ring on. So I got one of those ring wearables and it tracks everything.

And the reason I'm talking about this is specifically because my other tracker, which is a wrist worn tracker. Gives me like a really terrible rash. And so I'll go through this phase where I have this really bad rash on my arm and then I'll stop wearing it for months and then the rash will heal.

And what I've started doing is wearing the ring and then in when I'm doing exercises and I don't want the ring to crumble under a dumbbells weight or something, I'll switch to the arm based one and I just wear that one and then track my performance by using both of those.

And the reason I talk about those is because I'm tracking all these metrics. Where do they go? They go into health connect and then I'm going to, I'm going to boost this because this is the integration of the the health records and the biomarkers. And Guava health, if you're unfamiliar, that is what I've been doing.

And it's really great because what you can do is, and I get, I can get kicked back. I'm not going to put any promo codes out there or anything, unless you want them reach out to me on discord. Happy to give them to you. But I'm just giving this out because of the goodness of my heart.

It's so cool. You can track a lot of different things. And if you pay for the paid version, it'll run a statistical analysis of some of the things that you are tracking. So if I'm seeing an increased heart rate on Thursdays between two and 4 PM, then it's because I've, it'd be like, Hey, every Thursday at this time, your heart rate is going up.

Why is that? Oh, it's because I have a podcast then, and I need to be up and energetic, but you can also do it with other things. Like I've started obsessively tracking my mood every few hours. I've started obsessively tracking my blood pressure other things. And so you can see and compare it with other environmental effects, like weather, air pressure weather patterns, these types of things, and it'll run these statistical analyses in the background.

So the more data that you have on yourself, the more interesting insights that you can get. It'll run it against everything. You can look at your previous blood work lab results and see what, various bio biomarkers were. And it's just very cool. If you're into like understanding your body and what is going on with it and perhaps maybe some insights that you weren't aware of.

For me, it was blood pressure and, and air pressure, which kind of makes sense, but that's one that came up for me, but you can see what other people have found. Yeah, so that's my three new diagnosis, new ring the new UI to help me manage everything and a new me.

Yeah. All right. That's it for today, everyone. If you like this episode and enjoy some of the discussion about aviation topics. I know we've done a whole host of episodes in the past. Go listen to any one of those. Those are all great. Comment where you're listening with what you think of the stories this week.

If you have any thoughts on aviation safety, DEI The human factors and ergonomics, official response to the thing. Let us know for more in depth discussion and in between episodes, you can always join us on our discord community visit our official website, sign up for our newsletter, stay up to date with all the latest human factors news.

If you like what you hear, you want to support the show. You can leave us a five star review, a a subscribe, wherever you're watching or listening right now, that really helps whether you think so or not. All those cookies are given your information to other it's pairing you with other human factors, people, and it might help other people find the show.

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Barry Kirby. Thanks for being on the show and helping me break down all these aviation incidents. Where can our listeners go and find you if they want to talk about where you're getting your pilot's license?

[00:48:48] Barry Kirby: Yeah. If you want to come and chat to me, then you can find me on most socials such as Facebook, blue sky.

Everything else except pretty much X you can find me not at some variation of a buzz underscore K or Mr. B P Kirby. If you want to come and listen to me, chat to amazing people in the human factors domain come listen to my podcast, which is 12 to the human factors podcast, a 12 or two podcast.

com.

[00:49:12] Nick Roome: As for me, I've been your host, Nick Rome. You can find me on our discord and across social media at Nick underscore Rome getting written, getting really into blue sky. Blue sky's cool. Let's talk about it the post show and if you're sticking around stick around for the post show because we Got plenty more to talk about.

Thanks again for tuning into human factors cast until next time

it depends!