The past seven days have witnessed two crashes of passenger aircraft resulting in the deaths of more than 200 people marking one of the worst weeks in air travel in recent years. On the heels of a plane from Azerbaijan crash landing after being struck by a Russian air defence missile, a passenger aircraft carrying nearly 200 people crash-landed in South Korea after what was initially reported to have been a landing gear failure.
While, in theory, both incidents will be probed -- one more than the other -- the incidents raise questions about the safety of air travel -- coming as they do after decades of progress in making air travel the safest mode of travel that it is today.
Consider this: The year began with news of a door falling off a Boeing 737 Max plane mid-flight placing the lives of the entire flight at risk leading to a grounding of the entire fleet of 737 Max aircraft. That this could happen on a 737 Max plane that was earlier too grounded following reports of crashes, is indicative of how far safety standards have slipped since the early days of flying.
The model of aircraft has been riddled with a series of problems that Boeing admitted to only after two back-to-back crashes claimed nearly 400 lives back in 2018 and 2019. Taken together, the aviation industry -- for the first time in years-- is facing a crisis of credibility -- a crisis not helped by secrecy both from governments -- in the case of the downing of planes by defence missiles and plane manufacturers like Boeing reluctant to accept responsibility for design and manufacturing defects and cost-cutting that compromises the safety of the flying passengers.
While the crisis has so far not led to any decrease in air travel — not surprising given how convenient it is — it hasn’t gone unnoticed among the flying public. Today, some travel booking websites allow passengers to search for flights while filtering out Boeing planes from search results, helping to reassure flying passengers that their flight will more likely than not be safe.
But as the last week has shown, the threats go beyond that -- and if left unchecked would only further fuel suspicion and skepticism about the industry. What the industry -- not just the airline industry, but also including the regulators and international agencies that regulate them -- needs is a culture of accountability -- one in which those responsible for either wilfully, negligently or accidentally knocking planes out of the sky are held to account for their actions.
Be it the Boeing executives who knowingly cut the wrong corners to save costs, to generals of the Russian army who have -- not once but twice, knocked civilian planes out of the sky. A chain of accountability needs to be established simply because if allowed to fester it would mean those responsible will be allowed to keep the spoils of their irresponsible behaviour -- be it in the form of costs saved or being emboldened by the lack of accountability to carry out further acts of indiscretion or carelessness thus putting many more lives at risk.
The least that these two accidents must teach us is that nothing, least of all safety, should be treated casually, especially when lives are at stake.
