February 2011 - Indian Airforce

ecome the new face of flight safety in thestation. Flight safety will become their baby,when they’ll see their names along withthe slogan, they will put that into practice,motivate others to do, and will think moreabout flight safety - thus making flight safetyan ‘our’ concept.Special professionally designed /videos/publicity materialEveryone will agree that flight safety shouldlargely be a preventive effort-cleanliness/maintenance all directed to prevent FOD/incidents. The flight safety people do prepareinteresting slogans/ publicity material, but therehas been a distinct lack of any ‘catchy slogans orfocused sustained campaign that would attractand retain client/ user interest. Probably, we needthe services of a specialised professional agencyto do this for us. I have yet to see a flight safetyvideo of the IAF with which we all can relate to. Istill remember the impact, Mission Udaan videohad on me when I first saw it and continues tohave the same impact even now. Such jobs arebest done by experts in their own fields.Another thought which comes to mind. Everystation has flight safety slogans painted on thewall, glow signs, flexi boards - where do thesecome from? Honestly I don’t know- but I guesseither from the flight safety directorate, CFSIO,SFSIO, or picked up from magazines from otherair forces or now easily from the internet. Howabout inviting each air warrior to submit flightsafety slogans? Those selected, should be paintedin the station along with the contributor’s nameandthen updated every three /six months. In thisway, a whole new breed of air warriors, incognitoand not connected with flight safety so far, willWe will also get inclusive by involvingmore and more people in any safetyrelated programme in the station. Weknow from experience that OHR boxes /HEVOLREP boxes are grossly underutilised.Let’s get together people to complete aquestionnaire form with their thoughts on theexisting flight safety activities - their opinions,their role, their involvement and the good andbad of the existing activities and how to improvethem. Questionnaire forms when left for people tocomplete and submit generally do not produce agood/ satisfactory response rate. But when madeto sit down as a collective activity and permittingit to be anonymous, the response can be prettypositive.I am confident that such an activity will provideus with valuable insights on the thinking of the‘common man’ as far as flight safety is concernedtheyoung medical asst or the admin asst whomay consider himself to be remote from any iotaof flight safety will suddenly be involved. We willbe successful in getting views from our clients. Wewere successful in doing so, by soliciting collectivefeedback from patients on our system and servicesat SMC (which we always believed were of a veryhigh order): a reality check so to say.Bringing the change from ‘his’ to ‘our’ is notgoing to be easy or happen overnight. After all weare giving each air warrior something additionalto think about! A conscious effort has to be madewhich in the long run becomes natural to each oneof us. Whether at home or office, eventually safetywill become our baby!!!- Gp Capt Narinder TanejaINDIAN AIR FORCE 2 0 1 1 F e b r u a r y Aerospace Safety 17