These recertifications have strict safety benchmarks that every flight attendant needs to hit in order to stay on the job. “We have to be able to evacuate [the aircraft] within seconds as part of training each year,” Neely says.
This in-depth training was on full display when the regional Endeavor Air jet recently flipped on the runway in Toronto. “Pilots are trained for emergencies; flight attendants are trained for emergencies; the first responders and firefighters at the airport are trained for emergencies,” says Brickhouse. “The fact that everyone on board that aircraft actually survived is a testament to that training. It had to be a very tense situation, but from everything I can see, the flight attendants were extremely calm, and they guided everyone out of that aircraft.”
Airline pilots have similarly rigorous standards to ensure they stay sharp. Every six months, commercial airline pilots are required to perform two days of training in a flight simulator. “Pilots are faced with several different scenarios in the flight simulator to keep passengers safe,” says Dan Bubb, a former airline pilot and expert on commercial aviation at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. “This includes simulated engine failures, fires, instrument failures, bird strikes, and wind shear among many others.” So travelers can rest assured the captain knows the right safety maneuver to employ, no matter the situation.
And it’s not just flight attendants that are compelled to keep their safety skills sharp. “Air traffic controllers undergo very rigorous training including tough exams that they must pass,” Bubb says. Air traffic controllers must attend the FAA’s special academy in Oklahoma City for several months, where they learn the safety basics in a classroom and practice on state-of-the art simulators. From there on, they continue to train for two or three more years in the classroom and on the job before they can be considered a full-fledged professional air controller.
From the “silent review” of evacuation procedures to sizing up passengers during boarding, flight attendants do more than man the beverage cart during flights.
Details of every safety incident are pored over by professional inspectors
After every aviation safety incident, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board are dispatched to gather massive amounts of evidence for their official report. “The purpose of those investigations is to figure out exactly what happened, why it happened, and most importantly, what changes are needed to prevent that same thing from happening again,” Brickhouse says.
Investigators are extremely thorough, working slowly and methodically and taking all factors into account. “In an accident investigation you get data from a lot of different sources,” Brickhouse says. “So fortunately, with [the Toronto] accident, the pilots survived. The flight attendants survived. The passengers survived. They’re all going to be witnesses that investigators will talk to.” There’s plenty of other physical evidence that investigators will study, too, from the runway and the damaged plane itself, to the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, according to Brickhouse. Officials will also look into records like the training programs of the crew and the weather reports from that day.
Once all the evidence is reviewed, investigators will determine what caused the crash and what practices or equipment needs to improve. “There will be human and mechanical error—that is unavoidable,” says Bubb. “That being said, we can minimize the number of incidents and accidents that take place. After the NTSB reports on these accidents are released to the public, the aviation industry will use them to learn what happened and how we can make our air traffic system safer.”
New technology is constantly being rolled out to improve safety
In addition to technological improvements to flight deck instruments, aircraft exteriors, and runway surfaces, there’s also new software that’s rolling out behind the scenes. “The FAA spent millions of dollars and more than a decade to test a new air traffic system called Next Generation,” Bubb says. “This is designed to make air travel safer and more efficient.”
