by Bogomir Glavan (Bogomir.Glavan@aa.com) and Nick Peterson (Nicholas.Peterson@aa.com), American Airlines
American Airlines (AA) started our Safety II journey in 2018 when senior leadership decided to evaluate a path bringing Safety II to AA. AA’s safety leadership met with Dr. Erik Hollnagel to chart a path using our robust Safety I systems as a benchmark. It quickly became evident that we had to approach this from a different lens. I was brought on board as part of a grassroots team to figure out how we would bring these concepts into our safety programs and ultimately be able to measure resilient performance in airline crews during everyday line operations. It was a daunting task for the whole group, even those that have been at airlines for a long time, yet exciting to have a blank slate and backing of leadership.
Fast forward two years and we have our own language, a model, 100 observed flights translating into over 2,000 lines of data and a name to hang our hat on, the AA Learning and Improvement Team, LIT!
Initial roadblocks
- Refining the language already established to fit the organization and operating style.
- Safety II does not replace Safety I or traditional safety, they complement each other. 15,000 AA pilots who embrace and know a proven Safety I model will have to see what Safety II can bring to the table to hit the “I believe button”.
Lessons Learned…so far
- It takes some time to let go of the Safety I security and familiarity and fully embrace Safety II. As an anecdotal reference we found it took about 6 months for us as full-time LIT observers to change our perspective.
- Eventually you need to put a stake in the ground and move forward with your own language and model, what works for your organization may not be verbatim from the text books and academics. That’s ok.
- Implementing a learning culture is tough. Getting employees to take time to deliberately “debrief” is difficult, especially when they see that with a negative connotation. However, this is where we can affect exponential positive change.
- Crews love to talk about what they did and how they overcome challenges. These “Shop Talk” sessions are a gold mine of data and insight on how crews think and act.
What’s next for AA’s LIT
- Begin to incorporate the concepts of resilient performance and observed proficiencies into our captain leadership course and annual pilot training involving human factors.
- Review and analyze the 100 observations we have recorded and begin LIT paper #2!
- Collaborate and share with you!
AA’s LIT group would appreciate any and all feedback on our linked paper. Please send us an email (Bogomir.Glavan@aa.com, Nicholas.Peterson@aa.com). We welcome any discussion and send an open invitation to any organization, aviation or other, to reach out if they want to ask more questions or brainstorm as they embark on their journey.