Risk Management Magazine

Understanding the direction a safety program is headed — or why it’s moving that direction — requires knowledge of how the program evolved over the years. Successes and failures; mission and manpower changes; and, of course, regulatory changes are all contributing factors instrumental to moving forward.

The following incident happened a few years ago while I was an AH-64A instructor pilot at the Western Army National Guard Aviation Training Site at Silverbell Army Heliport in Marana, Arizona. It demonstrated to me that when things happen, some of them go the way you want while others do not.

Mishap investigations rarely uncover new contributing failures. Nearly every mishap is the result of a combination of the same errors that contributed to a previous mishap.