Take Pride at Work = Taking Responsibility

I just finish watching Air Clash Investigation on National Geographic.
National Geographic is one of my favorite TV programme.
Today it was featuring the “almost” air clash Air Canada.
It was a new plane Boeing 746. What happened was that ½ way the journey, the fuel tank alarm went off indicating that there is low pressure, meaning that the fuel tank is running out of fuel. The interesting thing is that the digital measurement, which work by calculation indicate that there should have fuel left. So the pilots have to perform an emergency landing, but before they could even execute the task, all the tanks alarm went off. This was the first time in history that an air plane operated at both engine down in 26500 ft above sea level.. is like holy crap.

Well, the pilot did manage to land, with nose break not functioning. It was a real close shave for all the passengers and the crew member. The interesting part is the investigation. After months of investigation, they found out that what went wrong was that the amount of fuel to be pumped into the air plane was calculated wrongly. GOSH.

The amount to be pump into the air plane is usually calculated in kilogram. In this flight, the amount of fuel needed should be 22,300 KG, but the airplane technician pump in 22,300 lb of fuel. The approximate KG à LB is 1KG to 0.5 LB. So which means that the technician only pump in ½ of what is required for the entire journey. The error is in the calculation of fuel in different metric. This little mistake could have caused 80 lives.

Yes, many of us would say that it maybe a small mistake. I remember very clearly that when I was taking my Diploma in Chemical & Pharmaceutical, there is one module about industrial safety. I remember the module very well, because most of the lectures, my lecturer will show case similar disastrous events and we will start to analyses where when wrong. A comment that lecturer made that leave me with great impact till today is: for any disastrous event to take place, there must be a lot of small ignorant mistakes or “take for granted” events to take place first. Therefore, each individual personnel hold an important role and responsibility for the position. A small little mistake can snow ball into something beyond imagination. A technician who role is just to top up the fuel tank could have caused a deadly air clash. Of course, the pilot is also at fault too for not checking the calculation that lead to the next level into the disastrous event.

Take Pride at Work, Take Responsibility for your Actions.