Every day, pilots, flight attendants, air traffic control officers (ATCOs), mechanics, and other frontline aviation professionals put their skills and judgment to the test to solve problems that cross their paths.
Be it a failure not covered by any checklists, noncompliant passengers, a recurrent glitch in the flight planning software, or unclear instructions in a maintenance manual, “sharp-end” workers are always searching for ways to overcome challenges and accomplish their duties.
As desirable a trait as this can be on most occasions, this problem-solving attitude can sometimes be detrimental to safety, as it may cause risks to become normalized and hazards to go unreported. When employees deal with operational issues by “fixing and forgetting” (as described by Canadian researchers Tanya Anne Hewitt and Samia Chreim)1 rather than searching for root causes and reporting difficulties, organizations are deprived of important opportunities to learn …
