Responding by using Kevin's use of the word 'accident' literally.
In the aviation professional discussion forums where the collision over
Germany is generating very high levels of activity at present, it is now
being noted (although not yet in the public media) that EVEN IF the Swiss
ATCO had performed exactly as he did, the collision would not have happened
if the Russian aircraft had ignored his eventual instruction. This is
because, it has now transpired, Russian pilots - unlike other pilots - are
trained to give priority to instructions of ATC ahead of the warnings of
their on board collision warning systems. Other pilots are trained to do the
reverse. In this case the instruction from Swiss ATC had the effect of
steering the Russian into the DHL plane, whereas his on board collision
warning was trying to steer him away from the DHL.
(How did this happen? The planes were on a collision course. For various
reasons the Swiss ATCO did not identify this fact until 44 seconds before
impact. This was about the same moment that the anti collision equipment on
the two aircraft detected each other. The on board equipment did what they
are designed to do - told the DHL plane to descend and the Russian to
ascend. But at exactly the same moment ATC did what they were trained to
do - told one plane to descend and issued no instruction to the other.
Unfortunately he chose the 'wrong' plane. Thus the DHL plane had only one
instruction - to descend. The Russian received two contradictory
instructions within one second - and had been trained to obey the wrong
one.)
In this case, therefore, one 'novelty' is likely to be change in trained for
operational practice amongst Russian airline pilots. This need has emerged
from an electronically mediated expansive learning cycle generated amongst
the international community of pilots by a disturbance that has revealed an
underlying contradiction. However in the public domain there are compelling
political reasons to 'blame' either the Russian pilot or the Swiss
controller.
The discussion is now moving on to the culturally situated nature of current
Russian operational practice, and what might be needed to change a practice
that might be in tension with other culturally situated practices of Russian
aircrew (my language, not theirs).
This suggests that the answer to Kevin's question is that a 'novelty' is a
potential product of an 'accident', where the accidental occurence generates
socially and culturally situated reflection on its nature.
By the way, there are many, many examples of culturally situated variations
in operational practice amongst aircrew. As other types of accident are
minimised by technological means they are providing a steadily increasing
proportion of the root systemic causes of aviation accidents. Globally you
are at your safest from these kinds of accident when you are flying
domestically in the United States - where over 90% of what is whizzing
around is being flown by people who share the same culturally situated
practices.
Phillip Capper,
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business Ltd. (WEB Research),
Level 13
114 The Terrace
(PO Box 2855)
WELLINGTON
New Zealand
Ph: +64 4 499 8140
Fx: +64 4 499 8395
Mb: +64 021 519 741
-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Rocap [mailto:krocap@csulb.edu]
Sent: Thursday, 11 July 2002 10:37 a.m.
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: culture and novelty
Dear friends,
How then does "novelty" relate to "accidents", e.g., an accidental
occurrence (a fortuitous accident, I guess) that opens a new and
worthwhile angle on an activity or practice and ends up changing the
activity/practice?
Are they the same? Are there meaningful differences?
In Peace,
K.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 01 2002 - 01:00:11 PDT