(ELECTRONIC MUSIC)
RICHARD DE CRESPIGNY: It's great to be here.
I'm truly amongst friends and colleagues.
And we're a passionate group of people, we have the same aim,
so it's a privilege for me to be here.
The story of QF32
is one of human factors not just on the flight deck
but with the seven teams, the eight teams which is the pilots, the cabin crew,
air traffic control, policemen, firemen, the ground staff,
the Qantas Crisis Centre in Sydney and even the passengers.
Human factors involves everyone in aviation
and it was a truly great team effort
and as Shane said 469 people came home or went home safely
because of the team effort.
It's essential that everyone in aviation understands human factors.
It's a broad subject that includes a human condition,
factors that affect our human performance
and human machine interfaces.
Human factors subjects include,
the physiology in psychology of the brain and the mind.
And the mind is a brain in action.
Mental models, fatigue, stress, distractions, mental space,
free mental space, situation awareness, safety and a just culture.
Crew resource management, risk, decision making,
teamwork and ultimately leadership.
These are all the elements in human factors,
these are the mental or soft skills that are essential for every safe flight.
Because whilst the harder threats are decreasing,
so engines are getting more reliable, airframes are getting better
the soft threats are increasing..
Whilst the increased reliability of engines
improves, all aviation professionals
that are here today, we know that we're challenged
more by the increased threats of disruption, change, complexity,
automation, congestion, reducing costs and minimal time,
and reducing time.
You never hear about aviation when things go well
that's because our SOPs get the job done
and the tough and competent leaders use their skills
to protect their teams.
It's when things go wrong,
that the human factors become the critical thing that separates
life from potential death.
And there's nothing easy about these skills.
And the skills that I write about in my second book is knowledge,
training, experience, teamwork, leadership, decision making,
crisis management and risk.
These are the skills and everyone that are involved in aviation,
from the engineer, air traffic controller to the cabin crew member
and the pilot.
These are the human factors which are the elements of
true resilience.
They increase our successes, reduce our near misses
and help us create novel solutions when we find ourselves
and our passengers facing the unexpected, low probability
and potentially disastrous splacks one events.
The aim with human factors is to build tough, disciplined,
competent, confident and courageous professionals
such that we had and all the teams on board QF32
who have demonstrated how they can protect themselves
and the flying public.
So congratulations to and thanks to everyone at CASA
who protects and the safety of the industry
and has produced this wonderful human factor safety kit.
Everyone must commit to a lifetime of learning,
the skills that got you where you are here today
will not get you into the future.
So I recommend this human factors kit
as your path for life of continual learning and journey.
Journey into the human condition showing amateurs and professionals
together how to maximise their potential and their performance.
My tour in human factors started when I
became the aide to the governor-generals.
There was Ninian Stephen and Sir Zelman Cowen.
And I remember I asked them how did you get to be where you are?
You are so successful, you've succeeded and reached the pinnacle
in your career.
How did you do it?
And they said, "Well do you know what, we just always prepared.
We were disciplined, we always studied, we were keeping in advance
and opportunities came."
You know some people say they were lucky
but there's no such thing as luck, well you make your own luck.
The harder I work, the luckier I get.
Although my wife, Coral who is here would say,
the luckier Richard works the luckier she gets.
But luck has nothing to do it, it's preparation
and a lifetime of learning.
And that set me up for the rest of my career.
Now I've met and I've spoken to Neil Armstrong many times
and you may not be aware that the Apollo 11 landing
that comes up to its 50th anniversary, on 20 July this year.
That is one of the greatest exercises in resilience
and human factors.
When they disconnected from the command module and started their descent
they were already 25 feet per second error into a 50 foot per second error
that would cause them to abort.
When they had left the command module, they were half their way
to an abort but then they high.
And then they got the 1201, 1202 errors,
all kinds of things are going crazy.
Neil Armstrong should've been looking at the landing site
at 20,000 feet.
There were so many distractions, so many failures, so many unknowns
that were unexpected things.
He didn't look 'til 2,000 feet.
For all you know is that Neil just landed and it all worked beautifully,
what you don't realise is that all the human factors at NASA,
from behind the scenes to the preparation.
NASA - the Lunar lander was a first digital fly by while machine
in the universe.
No one knew how to fly it.
So NASA built four Lunar lander training vehicles
to practise and they crashed three.
High risk, but Neil said that that practice protected them
when he had to disconnect the landing system
because it was meant to be an automatic landing.
He disconnected it, took over, landed and luckily -
well, that experience, that deliberate practice.
The pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone
all produced a resilient team that was Apollo 13.
Then I met Gene Kranz
and Gene Kranz represents the human factors and resilience
the other side at the back end.
Remember Apollo One had a fire in 1967 where three astronauts
lost their lives.
NASA - Gene Kranz said NASA would not have got to the moon
if it wasn't for Apollo One.
Apollo One showed the errors, the things that were missing.
Gene Kranz changed the culture, the safety mentality,
he made people courageous and able to stand up
that changed the culture and that led to Apollo 11 success
and then the Apollo 13 which was humanity's best failure.
Remarkable person.
Gene Kranz said you have to be tough, competent and disciplined
to survive.
Never let your knowledge be your weakness.
Always know how to lead by example
and invert the logic and above all never give up.
These are elements to resilience, these are elements of the
human factors of success.
And finally Sully Sullenberger,
he has become a friend.
What you may not know is when Sully landed on the Hudson River,
he prefers landing to the word ditching.
When he landed on the Hudson River, he had a copy of Sidney Dekker's book
Just Culture in his left-hand nap bag.
Sully was always committed to a lifetime of learning
and he said, "You know I never expected my whole career..."
And we're pilots here, you're only as good as your last flight.
Sully said, "I never thought my whole career will be summed up
by four minutes of flying.
And I never thought I'd have to do something I've never been trained for
or expected."
And the NTSB in America said, "Sully that's nonsense.
We've listened to the voice recorder, we know that you have been
practising for that flight every day of your career."
Sully Sullenberger had the elements of resilience,
he understood the human factors.
Jeff Skiles was on his first sector out of training,
they operated as a perfect team and did one of the most
miraculous landings on the Hudson.
So these are the people that have influenced me.
Aviation has been around for 115 years
and we are successful, not because of me,
not because of my crew, not because of my airline.
It's because we all pool our knowledge,
we learn from our failures, our near misses
and we even learn from our successes.
And we share the knowledge, we pass it on
'cause there truly aren't enough opportunities
to learn from my own experience, own failures.
We share the knowledge, we pass it down,
we learn these are human factors and it leads to resilience.
So I'm really proud to be here representing the whole industry
which represents many people, the airport, air force
who have influenced me and my career.
We all share knowledge, we pass it on
whether it's from the air force or Neil Armstrong
and we all benefit and we all become safer and more resilient.
Medicine and aviation are at opposite ends of the safety spectrum
and the only other point I'd like to make,
although there aren't many here is this human factors kit
is the elements of human performance
to survive.
And it's relevant in aviation, mining all the way through to medicine.
These are the elements of resilience we all need,
your personal life and your corporate life.
And it's a real privilege to therefore suggest and commend to you
the human factors kit.
This is truly your guide to your life and resilience.
Thank you.