Sheikh Monirul Islam :
IN THE wake of the disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines, terrorism has been investigated as a possible reason and rightly so. However, it is also important to look at possible causes surrounding the integrity of the aircraft’s structure. Perhaps, the notion that Boeing makes the safest aircraft is longer something that we should live with happily.
Composite material used at a very high ratio to make the structure of the modern aircraft could be a matter of concern. The flight control surfaces including the whole tail plane (vertical fin including the rudder plus the whole horizontal stabiliser are made from glass reinforced fibre and also remember that we have flyby wire technology to go along with it. Is this making an aircraft too vulnerable to certain in-flight conditions, particularly at a very high altitude where temperature is around minus 70 degrees centigrade? Also, how much should we rely on extended twin-engine operation aircraft?
Time has come to rethink safety, of course taking into consideration the maintenance-related errors. It’s time to rethink how the European Aviation Safety Agency has modified the way we think about safety from the engineering point of view. Are we putting profit before everything, to satisfy the corporate goal?
Perhaps, the open sky policy is not the best thing that has ever happened to the global aviation business. Aircraft became lighter to be fuel efficient. Extended-Range Twin-Engine Operations was introduced to cut corners so that aeroplanes can fly now through shortest possible distance.
I think we have reached a threshold where technologies can only take that much further. One perfect example is automobile engines that cannot be made any more fuel efficient. So they make the cars lighter and introduce hundreds of gadget in the interior and exterior to make them look attractive and stay competitive in the market.
It is like price war is on all the time. Did car become any cheaper? They never did. They promised the same in aviation. Did we get cheaper tickets to fly? Yes, we did, but only during those months when the aircraft goes empty. They call this yield-flexing and by doing so they even managed to bring low cost operation.
But at the end of it all, the price became dearer and virtually everyone lost in the game. Why? Because it is not regulated any more, they call it free market. At the end, the big one captures the market and everyone plays to its rules.
Economics is good, but combined with mathematics and if the models are tailored to serve a hidden agenda, the customers are the biggest losers. Once again it is time to re-think. Customer must drive the market, not the corporate.
It is time to rethink aviation safety from engineering and maintenance point of view. It is time to put safety before corporate profit.
(Sheikh Monirul Islam is an aircraft engineer)
