STANDARDS UNDER PRESSURE: Critical Thinking When Lives Depend On ItStandards Under Pressure examines 37 historical situations—from Tenerife to Three Mile Island, from the Challenger disaster to the sinking of the Titanic—through a single lens: which of the 15 intellectual standards of sound reasoning failed, how, and what it cost. Drawn from the domains of aviation, engineering, medicine, military operations, and energy, the cases cover c...

Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety--building in more warnings and safeguards--fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernobyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of...

An expert explains how conventional wisdom about decision making can get us into trouble—and why experience can’t be replaced by rules, procedures, or analytical methods.In making decisions, when should we go with our gut and when should we try to analyze every option? When should we use our intuition and when should we rely on logic and statistics? Most of us would probably agree that for important decisions, we should follow certain guidelines—gather as much info...

When faced with a ’human error’ problem, you may be tempted to ask 'Why didn’t these people watch out better?' Or, 'How can I get my people more engaged in safety?' You might think you can solve your safety problems by telling your people to be more careful, by reprimanding the miscreants, by issuing a new rule or procedure and demanding compliance. These are all expressions of 'The Bad Apple Theory' where you believe your system is basically safe if it were not for those few unreliable pe...

Redefining Airmanship offers the first concrete model of the abstract ideal of "airmanship," and gives the reader step-by-step guidance for self-appraisal and improvement in the areas of flight proficiency, teamwork, and good judgment in crisis situations. The author, Major Tony Kern, draws on his extensive flight and crew-training experience in the U.S. Air Force, but his model is invaluable for all pilots, whether military, recreational, or commercial."Kern's work is a b...

What does the collapse of sub-prime lending have in common with a broken jackscrew in an airliner’s tailplane? Or the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico with the burn-up of Space Shuttle Columbia? These were systems that drifted into failure. While pursuing success in a dynamic, complex environment with limited resources and multiple goal conflicts, a succession of small, everyday decisions eventually produced breakdowns on a massive scale. We have trouble grasping the complexity and...

Flight Discipline is the complete tool kit for any aviator, whether military, commercial, or recreational, to develop the crack discipline needed to be a safe and effective aviator. Major Tony Kern analyses the causes of poor flight discipline, gives chilling case studies of the consequences, and lays out a plan for individual improvement. Key words are italicized and review questions included for each chapter. An unequalled guide to this mainspring of good piloting.

On April 14, 1994, two U.S. Air Force F-15 fighters accidentally shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopters over Northern Iraq, killing all twenty-six peacekeepers onboard. In response to this disaster the complete array of military and civilian investigative and judicial procedures ran their course. After almost two years of investigation with virtually unlimited resources, no culprit emerged, no bad guy showed himself, no smoking gun was found. This book attempts to make sense of thi...

Expert authors demonstrate the topic using pilot drawn from an FAA/NASA sponsored database. A post-mortem of real-life, real-pilot accidents are examined to explain what went wrong and why. An action agenda is drawn of preventive techniques pilots can effect to avoid the same risks.

"One of the most mesmerizing and exhilarating, yet alarming modern technology books…an extraordinary tale." —Gillian Tett, Financial TimesPinpoint tells the fascinating story of a hidden system that touches nearly every aspect of modern life. Tracking the development of GPS from its origins as a bomb guidance system to its present ubiquity, Greg Milner examines the technology’s double-edged effect on the way we live, work, and travel. Savvy and or...

A five-time Space Shuttle commander reveals what astronauts know about improving performance and productivity under pressure.Jim Wetherbee, the only five-time Space Shuttle commander, presents thirty techniques that astronauts use—not only to stay alive in the unforgiving and deadly environment of space, but also to conduct high-quality operations and accomplish complex missions. These same techniques, based on the foundational principles of operating excellence, c...

Human error is cited over and over as a cause of incidents and accidents. The result is a widespread perception of a 'human error problem', and solutions are thought to lie in changing the people or their role in the system. For example, we should reduce the human role with more automation, or regiment human behavior by stricter monitoring, rules or procedures. But in practice, things have proved not to be this simple. The label 'human error' is prejudicial and hides much more than it reve...