Promoting Air Safety

Washington, DC

As a program analyst in the Office of System Safety at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Geoff McIntyre has long labored to make air travel of all kinds safer. Now the 59-year-old McIntyre, holder of a Ph.D. and member of Local 1509 (Council 26), has arranged his thoughts in a book that has gained favorable attention in the aviation industry.

Patterns in Safety Thinking: A Literature Guide to Air Transportation Safety takes issue with the way educational courses treat the subject. Students, he says, "walk out of those classes with the sense that safety can be reduced to a number." That’s because much of the instruction focuses on such theoretical subjects as quantitative analysis and probability theory, with few students ever attending a down-to-earth (or up-in-the-air) safety course, conference or lecture.

The book does not address issues related to terrorism. But in general, McIntyre declares, air travel can be safer, "if pro-active measures are taken. We need to stay in front of accidents — emphasizing prevention — instead of focusing too much on investigations after the accidents happen."

For more information, log onto the website of Ashgate Publishing.