The Tao Road to Risk Mitigation - In Wichita Kansas?
A 5-hour road trip brought me to a midwestern aviation capital in Wichita, Kansas. The annual U.S. Flight Test Safety Workshop was again an enlightening and sobering remembrance. MIT's STPA was again presented as a tutorial, but his many test programs will incorporate it. Too few I'm afraid. Distinguished retired USAF test pilot Rod Huete took us through the painful lessons of the 1990s X-31 mishap. Painful because the Air Force Test Center had embraced all the CRM practices that should have prevented this accident. And the X-31 program had assembled a stellar test team. But again the ego and human frailty yeared up to bite. Mike Contratto, Dept. of the Air Force augmented this theme with his thought-provoking presentation, "The Tao, Self Deceptive Rationalization and the Vulcan Mind Meld." In his talk, Contratto incorporated wisdom from George Chandler's masterpiece, "The Tao of Safety" quoting the comp...