Abstract
Carrying out audits and detecting the issues that require urgent maintenance, as well as conducting the above-mentioned maintenance procedures, is essential for not only the efficacy of the services provided by an airline company but also the safety of the passengers and the crew.
A recent case known as the Zonk air accident proves that the airline staff is prone to searching for a way of earning additional money by refusing to report on the technical issues and using the aircraft that should have been subjected to maintenance. Therefore, the existing audits system, as well as the ethical principles of airline companies, needs a major update.
Analysis of the Issue
The Zonk accident is an obviously tragic reminder of the need to comply with safety rules in the airline industry. A closer look at the facts will show that the lack of proper maintenance was obviously the key reason for the aircraft to crash. According to the details of the case, the catastrophe occurred due to the mismanagement of the safety assurance process and the company’s willingness to earn additional revenues at the cost of the passengers’ and the pilot’s safety.
The fact that the new staff member, who was entirely new to the rules and, therefore, could not identify the orders that were clearly unacceptable from the perspective of passenger and staff safety, also needs to be brought up.
The fact that member was assigned with a rather complicated task, which was to be completed under very unfavorable weather conditions, proves that the airline company managers were trying to get away with their mischief. Unfortunately, their plan backfired, as the plane was unfit for any flights (Hood & Sweginnis, 2006).
Hypothesis
The idea that the company was trying to gain extra revenues by using the aircraft, which clearly needed to have been sending for maintenance, points at the fact that the airlines managers were trying to increase the revenue streak by making the staff fly the aircrafts, which had to be subjected to maintenance (Stolzer & Halford, 2012).
Therefore, it is assumed that the crash occurred was the fault of the company managers, who, not knowing the consequences well, decided to skip the maintenance procedures in order to earn additional money as a result of a rapid increase in the number of passengers for the destination in question (Krause, 2003).
Indeed, a range of details regarding the fact that the plane was in need of urgent maintenance has been discovered in the course of questioning the witnesses.
Among the key facts that serve as a solid proof for the hypothesis specified above, the fact that there was an obvious issue concerning the amount of fuel to be used for the flight, deserves to be brought up/ As the study says, the pilot needed to make certain arrangements concerning the amount of fuel used for the flight, might seem somewhat suspicious given the circumstances (i.e., the fact that the plane was in a no flight condition).
Alternative Hypotheses
It would be wrong to reject alternative solutions to a case in point without considering them first. The pilot may also have been the person to blame for the accident to happen, as he was, in fact, very sleepy, as the report claims, and, thus, could have made a range of mistakes in the process of navigating the airplane easily. The reports, however, do not contain the slightest amount of data, which may possibly point at the pilot’s fault, outside of the above-mentioned information concerning his sleepiness.
The supposition that the pilot could have been suffering depression and, therefore, may have either disregarded an obvious problem issue in the course of navigating the aircraft or even triggered the crash on his own. The idea of the crash being the pilot’s successful attempt at a suicide seems rather plausible in the light of the evidence concerning the problems that he was having in his personal life.
Regardless of the above-mentioned facts, the issue concerning the pilot going through a breakup with his girlfriend still lacks trustworthy information, as the claims of the people working with the pilot cannot be viewed as bulletproof evidence. Finally, the weather issue deserves to be viewed, yet it only adds credibility to the fact that the plane had not undergone a proper audit (Fergusson & Nelson, 2013).
Conclusion and Recommendations
Judging by the fact that the tragedy could have been avoided by running an audit on the aircraft in question properly and reporting the results accordingly, it will be legitimate to suggest that the audit system within the company should be rearranged.
First and most obvious, the reporting system should be improved so that every single detail regarding a possible malfunction should not trigger a catastrophe. Next, it is essential that the process of checking aircraft for malfunctioning should be updated, with a thorough analysis of the existing issues. Finally, a set of rigid rules should be introduced for not only managers but also new employees to comply with. Thus, it will be possible to reduce the number of accidents to a minimum.
Reference List
Fergusson, M. & Nelson, S. (2013). Aviation safety: A balanced industry approach. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
Hood, R. & Sweginnis, R. (2006). Aircraft accident investigation. 2nd ed. Casper, WY: Endeavor Books.
Krause, S. S. (2003). Aircraft safety: Accident investigations, analyses, & applications, second edition: accident investigations, analyses and applications. Upper Saddle River, NJ: McGraw-Hill Professional.
Stolzer, A. J. & Halford, C. D. (2012). Implementing safety management systems in aviation. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.