Wednesday Edition: BASS 2025

Say Again?

Close listening and close attention prevent errors. That was the message from John Murdock, safety chair with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), at today’s BASS 2025 opening session. Murdock emphasized clarity and precision in communications, active listening and monitoring, and maintaining vigilance and situational awareness.

“You have to tell us what you need, but it has to be at the right time,” Murdock said. He said controllers are trained to know when pilots are in critical phases of flight. But he added that pilots need to consider what the controller is doing when the pilots are cruising at Flight Level (FL) 410 with a low workload.In the same session, Patrick Moylan, chief safety and quality officer with West Star Aviation, said case studies make good learning tools. But he cautioned that case studies are anecdotes, not trends. “We, as humans, learn from storytelling,” Moylan said. “It’s the way it’s been for millennia.” Moylan also recommended what he called a “shotgun approach,” using multiple communication methods. Those can include daily huddles, weekly memos, monthly meetings, periodic training, and newsletters.

Erika Armstrong, a pilot with Advanced Aircrew Academy, discussed the way the startle effect impacts communication during emergencies. She cited the 2019 fatal crash of a King Air 350 in Addison, Texas. A report by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the pilots did not call for any checklists. Due to a loose friction lock, Armstrong said, the left throttle crept back. The safety copilot called, “You just lost your left engine.” But then the pilot flying (PF) applied left rudder, rather than the correct right rudder input. Armstrong described that as a “hear-and-do mistake.”

To prepare for such situations, she recommended “chaos training” in the simulator: non-graded situations with multiple emergencies, with the instructor inducing startle by taking away the emergency checklist.

Practice What You Preach

Written safety culture is one thing, according to Aviation Personnel International president Jennifer Pickerel, but actual practice can be another. “Culture is the way things are said and done in an organization,” Pickerel said. She described a workplace she had analyzed where slurs were tolerated, and the pilots were intimidated by the chief pilot. The workplace had the right policies, she said, but the safety culture and the organization culture were at odds. “What you tolerate,” Pickerel said, “sends a tremendous message to your team.”

The Last Chance to Fix It

“When you’re in the coal mine and that canary breathes its last, it’s probably best to get out of town.” That advice came from Capt. John Frearson, formerly of Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority. And he said it doesn’t matter if you learn later that the canary died of old age.

Frearson’s colorful analogy illustrated his point that in time-critical situations, pilots should treat doubt as fact. For example, if you’re at 500 ft on final approach, he said, and doubt exists about a safe landing, go around. “Part of preparation is the active pursuit of doubt,” Frearson explained. From that 500-foot point, he added, you have about a minute before you deploy thrust reversers, and if you’re starting to analyze within that last minute, it’s a bit late.

Pilots become familiar with stable approach criteria, and Frearson recommended adding one more criterion: an affirmation that it’s safe to continue.

Safe to Say

Pilots need to talk about their mental health challenges, and they need confidentiality to do it. Presenters emphasized those priorities in a panel discussion on mental health in aviation. “They are so scared when they call me,” psychotherapist Allison Duquette said. Duquette, with Arene Psychotherapy Services, said the industry needs to destigmatize mental health issues and make it easier to seek support. She also pointed to a need to let pilots use insurance for mental health care and for them to have loss of license protections.

“Can we please keep talking about this?” Duquette said. “This is the way that we’re going to change the culture.”

Capt. Dave Fielding, chair of the International Peer Assist Aviation Coalition (IPAAC), also stressed the importance of confidentiality. “When it comes to mental health and pilots, the horses scare easily,” Fielding said. “Confidentiality is key.”

Fielding cited statistics that show worst-case examples of the need for the industry to address mental health. As the accident rate has decreased, he said, deaths from intentional acts such as the 2015 Germanwings crash have risen. From 2001 to 2010, there were no intentional deaths. From 2011 to 2020, there were 422.

Jason Starke, chief operating officer of the Business Aviation Safety Consortium, described his own challenges while flying as a charter pilot. “People outside my field saw me as living the life,” Starke said. But he said he was dealing with time away from home, social isolation, and burnout.

Starke noted that some safety management systems are now incorporating psychological well-being as a safety component. Organizations that do that, he said, see 29 percent fewer human factors events.

“You are all Potential Targets”

The president of Groupe CLI-Aviation Cybersecurity, Luc Bédard, warned, “You are all potential targets.” Then he proved it by noting he had easily accessed laptops and other devices in the room.

When it comes to cybersecurity, Bédard said, “You’re as strong as your weakest link.” As an example, he shared a story of a CFO who was facing charges for insider trading. Bédard found that the man’s son had visited from college and had installed on a home computer a program to help with a college paper. Documents on the computer were sent to the cloud, and that’s where a security breakdown had happened. The CFO was cleared.

“People in IT are getting warned so often about cyberattacks that they’re starting to let down their guard,” Bédard said. He also said spoofing and jamming threaten GPS navigation. Secure GPS might be a solution, he said, but it’s not attack proof. He also said traffic-alert and collision avoidance systems (TCAS) need to be updated and protected.

Take Them on the Road

Capt. Josh Shields, aviation safety manager for BAE Systems, addressed a pilot recruiting problem: Business aviation lacks the well-defined college-to-career pipelines used by airlines. The solution is mentorship, Shields said. To foster mentorship, he said, business aviation leaders can seek speaking opportunities at school career days, offer hangar tours, and sponsor formal internships.

Shields described BAE’s three-week “experience internships” for aspiring pilots. “We take them on the road with us,” he said. “We try and give them as much hands-on as we can.” During that time, Shields said, the interns become fully integrated crewmembers.

He said he’d taken two interns to Britain and one to Sweden. “We want them in our life,” he said.

Cutting-Edge Tech

The final BASS 2025 session looked at emerging aviation technology. Eric Chang, director of product innovation for Aireon, described his company’s space-based aircraft surveillance products. Aireon offers real-time tracking, live data delivery, and air traffic management, Chang said. He added that AireonVECTOR can use time-difference of arrival (TODA) technology to determine aircraft true position if GPS interference occurs.

Karl Steeves, TrustFlight CEO, described artificial intelligence (AI) applications. They include safety voice reporting, which can increase safety reporting rates by pilots if they don’t have to tap out a written report, Steeves said. Other AI functions include document management and regulatory guidance, he said.

Tor Finseth, senior advanced R&D engineer for Honeywell Aero, discussed capabilities on the horizon. “We’re concentrated on technologies that are somewhere between five and10 years out,” Finseth said. Those technologies include voice-activated flight deck functions such as radio tuning. Another emerging capability is real-time accent conversion, he said. For example, if a French air traffic controller is speaking to a U.S. pilot, the system could convert both accents to what’s familiar for both speakers, thereby reducing miscommunication.